"Keeping with the convention, I do not propose to make any changes relating to taxation and propose to retain the same tax rates for direct taxes and indirect taxes including import duties," said the Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman, while presenting the Interim Budget 2024-25 in the Parliament today.
To ensure continuity in taxation, the Union Finance Minister proposed to extend certain tax benefits to start-ups and investments made by sovereign wealth or pension funds and tax exemption on certain income of some IFSC units till 31.03.2025.
In line with the Government’s vision to improve ease of living and ease of doing business, and to provide a relief to a large number of petty, non-verified, non-reconciled or disputed direct tax demands, many of them dating as far back as the year 1962, Smt. Sitharaman proposed to withdraw such outstanding direct tax demands up to ₹25,000 pertaining to the period up to financial year 2009-10 and up to ₹10,000 for financial years 2010-11 to 2014-15. This is expected to benefit about one crore tax-payers.
Hey Highlights of Indirect Tax
- FM proposes to retain same tax rates for indirect taxes and import duties
- GST unified the highly fragmented indirect tax regime in India
- Average monthly gross GST collection doubled to Rs 1.66 lakh crore this year
- GST tax base has doubled
- State SGST revenue buoyancy (including compensation released to states) increased to 1.22 in post-GST period(2017-18 to 2022-23) from 0.72 in the pre-GST period (2012-13 to 2015-16)
- 94% of industry leaders view transition to GST as largely positive
- GST led to supply chain optimization
- GST reduced the compliance burden on trade and industry
- Lower logistics cost and taxes helped reduce prices of goods and services, benefiting the consumers
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