After the Union Cabinet cleared it on Friday, the new Income Tax Bill is likely to be tabled in Parliament on Monday. The new bill is expected to reduce the number of sections by 25-30 percent to make the law simpler and more concise.
Reports show that the number of provisos and explanations have been reduced, and the word count has been halved.
The Business Standard , quoting an unnamed government official, said there would be no no excessive power and no excessive case of delegation. The power relating to quantification of income and levy of rates remain with Parliament.
The focus of the new law 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 Income Tax Department wants the bill to go for public consultation to ensure transparency and garner public feedback.
Consulting the stakeholders would reduce the chances of ambiguities or legal disputes in the future, which would lead to a smoother transition to the new tax regime.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said the Bill will be presented in the Parliament before being referred to the standing committee on finance. The committee would then start the process of consultation.
The bill aims to resolve the issues which arise out of interpretations done by various courts of law. There is an expectation that the new bill will avoid cross-referencing which means referring multiple provisions to make sense of what is said in one of them.
In a post-Budget interview with Mint, Sitharaman had hinted that the new Income Tax Bill would go to the standing committee. "Normally, standing committees go through this (kind of bill)," she said.
She also said that the new law would be concise with and be a small in size. "This will be simpler than what it was earlier, it will be easier to comply, it will use fewer words to convey the same things. And several amounts we used as either benchmark or ceiling are all being reviewed— whether they are relevant today or need to be there today," she said.
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