Budget 2018 - ONE TO ALL

[CS Swati Dodhi]

 

Direct Taxes:-

1. No changes in the structure of income tax slabs of individuals
2. 100% tax deduction for the first five years to companies registered as farmer producer companies with a  turnover of ₹ 100 crore and above.
3. Proposal to increase the health and education cess to 4%
4. Proposal to tax long-term capital gains exceeding ₹ 1 lakh in listed stock at 10%.
5. Additional benefit  of ₹ 50,000 to senior citizens for investment in mediclaim.
6. Additional ₹ 40,000 standard deduction of for salaried employees
7. Benefit of  reduced corporate rate of 25% for companies with reported turnover of up to ₹ 250 crore.

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Indirect Taxe

1. Proposal to increase the custom duty on mobiles from 15% to 20% and on some other mobile parts to 15%, and some parts of TVs to 15%.

Important issues

1. Every enterprise in India to be given a unique ID on the lines of Aadhaar.
2. Revamp the system of sanctioning of loans to SMEs. The information required for sanctioning the loan will be linked with GSTN and all required information can be fetched from GSTN Portal helping to grant the loans and reducing processing time.
3.  Recapitalisation to enable PSU banks to lend ₹ 5 lakh crore.
4. The government has identified 372 basic business reform actions. Each state will take up these reforms.
5. Explore the use of blockchain. Eliminate use of cryptocurrencies which are being used to fund illegitimate transactions need to be initiated.
6. 5 lakh WiFi hotspots in rural areas to provide easy Internet access.
7. As women’s contribution reduced to 8.33% towards PF in the first 3 years for new EPF accounts. The government will contribute 12% of EPF contribution for new employees in all sectors for the next three years.

 

Other points to consider:-

- Main focus of this year budget will be on strengthening rural and agricultural economy, health, infra, senior citizens

- Automatic revision of MPs’ emoluments every five years, indexed to inflation.

- Emoluments of President, Vice President and Governor being revised: ₹ 5 lakh; 4 lakh; ₹ 3.5 lakh per month respectively.

- The government insurance companies to be merged into a single entity, and subsequently listed in the stock exchange, as part of the disinvestment

- Redevelopment of 600 major railway stations;  Expansion of Mumbai transport system; suburban network of 160 km planned for Bengaluru.

- UDAN will connect 56 unserved airports in India.

- An institute proposed at Vadodara to train people for the bullet train programme

- AMRUT programme will focus on water supply to all households in 500 cities.

- All trains to be provided with WiFi, CCTV and other important amenities.

- Better road connectivity through Bharatmala project.

- Proposal to develop 10 prominent tourist destinations as Iconic tourism destinations.

- ₹ 3 lakh crore allocated for PM MUDRA Yojana.

- Universal health coverage progress

- Allocation of ₹ 56,619 crore for SC welfare and ₹ 39,135 crore for ST announced.

- 24 new government medical colleges and hospitals to be set up by upgrading existing district hospitals.

- ₹ 600 crore for nutritional support to TB

- One medical college per every three constituency.

-  Launching a flagship National Health Protection Scheme to cover 10 crore poor and vulnerable families, benefiting approximately 50 crore. Providing ₹ 5 lakh per family per year for medical reimbursement, under National Health Protection Scheme.

- ₹ 1200 crore for the flagship programme in health wellness centres

- Eighteen new schools of planning and architecure will be set up.

- Proposed a railway university in Vodadara.

- Scheduled Tribe population to be provided with Eklavya schools. Scheme for revitalizing school infrastructure, with an allocation of 1 lakh crore rupees over four years.

- Integrated B.Ed programme to be initiated for teachers, to improve quality of teachers..

- All poor people have a house to live in by 2022,

- In the next financial year, target the construction of two crore toilets.

- Removal of crop residue to be subsidised in order to tackle the problem of pollution due to burning of crop residue:

- 8 crore women new LPG connections by Ujwala

- Special scheme to address air pollution in Delhi-NCR region.

- Fishery and aquaculture and animal husbandry funds with a total corpus of ₹ 10,000 crore.

- Agri-Market Development Fund with a corpus of ₹ 2000 crore to be set up for developing agricultural markets.

- Restructured National Bamboo Mission to be launched with an allocation of ₹ 1290 crore to promote bamboo sector in a holistic manner.

- Grameen Agricultural Market (GRAM) will provide farmers a means to sell directly to buyers.

- ₹ 500 crore announced for Operation Green.

- Allocation to food processing ministry is being doubled from ₹ 715 crore to ₹ 1400 crore.

- The focus is on low-cost farming, higher MSP. Emphasis is on generating farm and non-farm employment for farmers.

- 470 APMCs have been connected to eNAM network, the rest to be connected by March 2018... Agri-Market Development Fund with a corpus of 2000 crore to be set up for developing agricultural markets

- The Minimum Support Price of all crops shall be increased to at least 1.5 times that of the production cost.