Bengaluru: In significant changes to the taxation process, Sitharaman announced the scrapping of income tax for senior citizens under certain conditions, new rules for removal of double taxation for NRIs, and a reduction in the time period of tax assessments among other measures.

ITR filing has been made easy for taxpayers as details of capital gains, income from list securities, dividend income, income from interest on bank deposits will all come pre-filled in the ITR form.

“Fiscal deficit in 2020-21 pegged at 9.5% of GDP. We would need another Rs 80,000 crores for which we would be approaching the market in these two months,” FM said.

The fiscal deficit in 2021-22 is estimated to be 6.8% of the GDP.

Taxation sector

·         Policies to make it easy for foreign investors to invest in India's infrastructure projects

·         Propose to make dividend payments to REIT (estate investment trusts) and Invit's (Infrastructure investment trusts) exempt from TDS

·         To further ease filing of IT returns, details of capital gains and interest from banks, post offices, etc will be pre-filled

·         The government has given relief measures for senior citizens by removing the need to file income tax returns for those aged over 75 years.

·         Import tax on gold, silver cut to 7.5% from 12.5%

·         It has also announced halving of the time frame for reopening of income-tax assessment cases from 6 years to 3 years. For reopening of serious tax evasion cases up to 10 years, the government has put in a monetary limit of cases involving over Rs 50 lakh in a year, writes Anil Sasi

·         This is expected to reduce instances of tax harassment of income tax payers.

“The tax system should put minimum burden on the taxpayers. A faceless dispute redressal platform to be set up for small taxpayers. Hence, a reduction of time in income tax proceedings is being proposed, while the time limit to reopen the assessment case proposed to be reduced to 3 years from the current 6 years limit,” FM said.

“To further reduce litigation for small taxpayers I propose to constitute a dispute resolution committee which will be faceless to ensure efficiency, transparency. Anyone with a taxable income up to Rs 50 Lakhs & disputed income up to Rs 10 Lakhs eligible to approach the committee,” Sitharaman said.