New Income Tax Bill: Taxpayers can expect THESE changes in the legislation likely to be in force from April 1 next year
Lok Sabha's select committee -- which is examining the Income Tax Bill 2025 -- made 285 suggestions. "We have made 285 suggestions to the Bill,' a committee member told PTI when asked about the report.
These changes relate to simplifying the language of the draft legislation. Now, the committee will present the report in the Lok Sabha on July 21. Some of the changes recommended include the following.
1. Removal of provision that denies income tax refunds if returns are filed after the due date. The bill requires that a person seeking refunds must mandatorily file income tax returns within the due date. And section 433 of the new IT bill states that a refund is sought only while filing a return.
2. Deduction under section 80M (which is mentioned under clause 148 of the new bill) for inter corporate dividends for the companies which avail the benefit of special rate of rate under section 115BAA was also missed out in the new income bill. So, this is also proposed to be reinstated.
3. NIL TDS certificate can also be availed by taxpayers, per the committee's suggestions, reported Business Standard. In the current version, new I-T Bill only low TDS deduction certificates were available to the taxpayers.
The Income Tax Act, 1961 has been in force from April 1, 1962. It was amended 65 times with more than 4,000 amendments.
The focus of new income tax bill is on simplification, ease of understanding and clarity. The Bill uses lucid language, active voice and shorter sentences and will remove redundancy and hard-to-understand explanations. The new Bill entails 2.6 lakh words and consists of 536 sections, with the number of chapters reduced to 23.
The bill aims to resolve the issues which arise out of interpretation done by various courts of law. The new bill avoids cross-referencing which means referring to multiple provisions to make sense of what is said in one of them.
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