 "New income tax bill expected to be approved by Cabinet tomorrow, tabled in parliament next week")
The new income tax bill, which Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman mentioned in her Budget speech, is expected to be approved by the Union Cabinet on Friday and tabled in the parliament next week.
In her Budget speech, Sitharaman said that she would introduce a new income tax will as a reaffirmation of the “commitment of the tax department to ’trust first, scrutinise later’. The Union government has pitched the exercise as part of an outreach to the middle class that comprises tax breaks and simplification of tax-collection and filing.
India Today has reported sources as saying that the new income tax bill is expected to be approved on Friday, following which the bill could be tabled in the parliament as early as Monday.
The report said that the bill, often called the direct tax code, is aimed at overhauling the existing tax structure to make it more streamlined and transparent.
While the specifics of the bill are not known, Union Finance Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey told Moneycontrol earlier this week that it will not include any new taxes but bring structural reforms. He further said that, once passed, the bill will come into effect on April 1.
“It will not change in that because that will be the prerogative of the tax policy. But structurally, it undergoes a massive change. The way it reads, the way it connects, the way it is understood. And the way the redundancy is removed. So, rationalisation and simplification exercises will follow in that. But some of the key things, reforms have also been brought in here,” said Pandey.
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