To begin with, the government will come out with amendments to income tax laws that would deal with the procedural, administration and exemption aspects, he told a post-Budget press conference."You have not heard the last word on exemption," he said, referring to the voluminous Income Tax Act, which also contained several archaic rules that will be cleaned up.
"We have cleaned up some exemptions. I do not want to burden the Finance Bill, which should mainly contain revenue mobilisation efforts," he said, adding there would be a separate legislation for addressing the issue.
Referring to the increase in excise duty exemption limit from Rs 3 crore to Rs 4 crore for small-scale industries, he said this had been done taking into consideration the inflation aspect as the previous revision was done five years back.
It was leading to fragmentation in the SSI sector, especially in the IT sector, and, hence, the need for hiking the exemption limit.
Meanwhile, on Mr Chidambaram’s proposal to impose a 0.01 per cent tax on withdrawal from banks of Rs 10,000 in one day, Dr Manmohan Singh said, “I think it is a tax which is not going to impose an unnecessary burden on the common man”.
“Mr Chidambaram deserves all the credit...The Budget will live up to meet challenges of the time,” Dr Singh said.
The Prime Minister said the Budget has provided massive allocation to vital sectors such as health, education, rural roads and rural sanitation to provide necessary momentum to the growth process.
— PTI
