Amendments to Income Tax Act will make no policy shift

To a question if any incentives is being considered for the private players in the healthcare sector, K Balasubramanian, Joint Secretary, Department of Revenue stressed that there should be no expectation beyond the corporate tax relief being offered with the headline rate brought down from 30% to 22%, be it healthcare or infrastructure.

Bengaluru: The new Income Tax Bill set to be tabled this week in Parliament will not make any policy change. The exercise will be only to make the law more lucid and comprehensible, informed K Balasubramanian, Joint Secretary, Department of Revenue, Union Ministry of Finance at an event in Bengaluru, on Monday. 

If anything, he added, the bill will move a regime of incentives, he added. To a question if any incentives is being considered for the private players in the healthcare sector, he stressed that there should be no expectation beyond the corporate tax relief being offered with the headline rate brought down from 30 per cent to 22 per cent, be it healthcare or infrastructure. “There is no going back on that particular path (of incentives) that the government has taken,” he stated.  

Likewise, individuals with disabilities who get additional deduction of Rs 75,000 under Section 80U of the Income Tax Act, he said no other incentives are forthcoming, to encourage their participation in the new tax regime. “While they should be promoted, however, the income tax act is not the medium or the instrument to do that. But other ministries which are made for it. Income tax act should not be confused with sector specific or status specific incentives,” he pointed out.