Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today disclosed its budget 2018-2019 for the fiscal year starting from 1 April 2018. The budget is largely focused on uplift of agricultural sector, along with major push to healthcare and education sectors in the country. Here are the key announcements of the Indian budget for 2018/19:

Direct Taxes

  • No personal income tax changes proposed in the Budget for 2018-2019.
  • Standard deduction of Rs 40,000 allocates for the salaried for transport and health.
  • For senior citizens, exemption of interest income on bank deposits raised to Rs 50,000.
  • Budget allocates money for social security and protection programme for all widows and orphaned children.
  • To allow 100% deduction to some farmer producer companies.
  • Reduced corporate tax of 25% extended to companies with an annual turnover of Rs 250 crore to benefit small, micro and medium enterprises.
  • The minister proposed to tax long term capital gains exceeding Rs 1 lakh at 10% without indexation and short term capital tax remains at 15%.
  • Health and education cess has been increased to 4%.
  • Proposes to introduce tax on distributed income by equity oriented mutual funds at 10%.

Indirect Taxes

  • Customs duty on mobile phones raised to 20% from 15%.
  • Customs duty on raw cashew reduced to 2.5% from 5%.
  • Customs duty on some mobile and television parts increased to 15%.

Incentives

  • To raise minimum support price for kharif season crops to 1.5 times of agri production cost—that is cost plus 50%.
  • Total credit to agriculture target set at Rs 11 lakh crore for FY19.
  • Strengthening the e-national agricultural market network.
  • The government will spend Rs 14.34 lakh crore on rural infrastructure across various schemes and departments.
  • National Health Protection Scheme for 10 crore families.
  • It provides a health cover of Rs 5 lakh per family a year.
  • Rs 600 crore to provide nutritional support for tuberculosis patients.
  • Rs 5.97 lakh crore allocates for infrastructure in FY19 compared with Rs 4.94 lakh crore in the revised estimates of FY18.