Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman has introduced the new budget for the upcoming financial year. Everyone thought that there would be a relief – especially the common man, who is the most subjected to tax returns. However, there has been no such relief from the government, and conversely, there is going to be a lot more stress.
Starting her speech with Rabindranath Tagore’s quote “Faith is like a bird. It sings, feeling the light, even when it is still dark in the morning”, Nirmala Sitaraman spoke for nearly 51 minutes. In these 51 minutes, she spoke about a lot of things, but did not give a proper clarity about the modifications to any sort of tax returns, which has everyone believing that the previous policies would only be implemented this year as well. This year’s budget has given a lot of importance to health care, infrastructure development, agriculture and farming, and railways, more than anything else.
The prices of petrol and diesel are already quite problematic to most of the population, and now this issue is about to get worse, with an increase of Rs. 2.50 per liter, on petrol, and an increase of Rs. 4 per liter, on diesel.
A new policy will come into place for all the NRIs, from October 21st, and over 400 tax return policies are set to be modified this year. A cess of 2.5 is going to be implemented on gold and silver, while tax on copper has been waived. Custom duties will be increased on automobiles, and the cost of solar inverter panels will be increased. The cost of individual parts of cars are set to be increased, while 10% tax is set to be increased on cotton. Leather imports and premium clothes imports are also said to get costlier.