On 1 February 2019, Finance minister Piyush Goyal presented the much awaited Union Budget in Lok Sabha. Goyal was appointed interim finance minister on January 23 with Arun Jaitley undergoing treatment in the United States. Some of the main measures are summarized as follows:
- Individual taxpayers with annual income up to 5 lakh rupees to get full tax rebate.
- Individuals with gross income up to 6.5 lakh rupees will not need to pay any tax if they make investments in provident funds and prescribed equities.
- Tax slabs for those with income over Rs 5 lakh remain unchanged.
- Standard tax deduction for salaried persons raised from 40,000 rupees to 50,000 rupees.
- Benefit of rollover of capital tax gains to be increased from investment in one residential house to that in two residential houses, for ataxpayer having capital gains up to 2 crore rupees; can be exercised once in a lifetime.
- Benefits under Sec 80(i) BA being extended for one more year, for all housing projects approved till end of 2019-2020.
- usinesses with less than Rs. 5 crore annual turnover, comprising over 90% of GST payers, will be allowed to return quarterly returns.
- GST has been continuously reduced, resulting in relief of 80,000 crore rupees to consumers; most items of daily use for poor and middle class are now in the 0%-5% tax bracket.
- Two per cent interest subvention on loan of 1 crore for GST registered MSME units.
- Allocation for North Eastern region proposed to be increased to Rs 58,166 crore in this year a rise of over 21% from the previous year.
