Budget 2024: Improve interface with Central Processing Centre, reduce TDS compliance burden for taxpayers: CII

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Budget 2024, will be presented by the finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, on February 1, 2024. As always, all quarters of the economy has certain expectations from the Budget.
A few key steps that would help to rationalise and simplify taxes are as follows:

Rationalise and simplify withholding tax provisions
TDS/TCS on purchase/sale of goods It is recommended that the TDS provisions of section 194Q and TCS provisions of section 206C(1H) be made applicable only to payees or payers who are not registered with GST. This will then align with the Government’s intention of widening and deepening the tax net. Alternatively, instead of TDS/TCS, the purchasers/sellers may be required to file Annual Information Returns. Also, in view of divergence between definition of ‘goods’ under Sale of Goods Act and GST law, ‘goods’ may be defined precisely with exclusion for items like shares, securities, foreign currency and actionable claims.

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Roadmap for withholding tax rates

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Government may consider laying down a roadmap for reducing the disparity in TDS rates by having only two or three categories of payments and a small “negative list” of payments which will not be liable to TDS.

The suggested categories of payments could be as follows:
Salary: TDS rate at Normal slab rates
Lotteries and horse race winnings: TDS rate at 30%
All other payments: TDS rate at 2%

The suggested “negative list”