Budget 2024: No major tax announcements are expected, says Akhil Chandna of Grant Thornton Bharat

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Budget 2024: The government is expected to extend the timeline for filing a revised tax return by individual taxpayers where foreign income and taxes are also required to be reported in the tax return, says Akhil Chandna, Partner, Grant Thornton Bharat.

In an interview with MintGenie, Chandna said that one expects the Government to provide some relief in terms of introducing monetary limits for the applicability of TCS provisions on credit card payments made on an international trip or reducing the rate of TCS to a nominal level to track such travel.

The forthcoming budget is an interim budget before elections and hence, no major tax announcements are expected. Having said so, like any other year, Individual taxpayers are hopeful to have some tax amendments that can result in tax savings in their hands. Some of the key expectations are:

In our view, the practice followed in the previous interim budgets will be maintained and significant tax amendments are unlikely this time as well.  However, the 2019 Interim Budget had seen a deviation from this practice when certain tax benefits were extended.  Accordingly, the Finance Minister may offer some relief to salaried employees and individual taxpayers in lower tax brackets to incentivise tax compliance.

The Government had deleted the limit of ₹7,00,000 for applying  Tax Collected at Source (TCS) provisions on credit card payments on foreign travel and increased the TCS rate to 20% effective 1 July 2023. 

This resulted in the blockage of funds since the TCS is only eligible for credit /refund at the time of filing the tax return by the individual taxpayer. As per reports based on certain surveys, around 95% of Indian travellers prefer payments through credit cards while