Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday announced a slew of concessions, including one per cent interest subsidy for lower and middle income housing loans, and exempted road repair and maintenance services from the ambit of service tax.
Replying to the debate on the Finance Bill 2009, which was passed with some amendments in the Lok Sabha, he also announced that the service tax on new services proposed in his Budget would come into effect from September 1.
Maintaining that lower and middle income housing deserves to be supported to stimulate this segment of house owners, Mukherjee said one per cent interest subsidy would be available to individuals for loans up to Rs 10 lakhs for houses that do not cost more than Rs 20 lakhs.
He proposed to provide Rs 1,000 crore for this purpose. Giving yet another sop, the Minister said that the eligible deductions for assessees with severe disability will be raised from Rs 75,000 to Rs 1 lakh for purposes of Income Tax.
The Minister also extended the benefit of deductions in respect of interest paid on education loan for higher education to legal guardian of the student under Section 80E of the IT Act.
Similarly, he extended the sunset clause for tax holidays for industrial parks by another two years up to March 2011, in a bid to provide stimulus to infrastructure sector in the wake of economic slowdown.
Mukherjee said the interest subsidy on home loans will be routed through the scheduled commercial banks and housing companies registered with the National Housing Bank. It will be available for a period of one year.
He said he also proposed to provide further stimulus to the housing sector by allowing tax holiday in respect of profits derived from projects approved between April 1, 2007 and March 31, 2008, if they are completed on or before March 31, 2012.
The Minister expected the developers to pass on the benefit of tax holiday to homebuyers by appropriately reducing their prices. "I am sure that both the expenditure and tax-foregone initiatives would provide relief to a large segment of prospective home owners and help revive the real estate sector," he said.
Yet another concession he extended was the tax holiday on profits in respect of business processing, preserving and packaging of meat and meat products and poultry, marine and dairy products.
Mukherjee, who had in his Budget speech announced seven-year holiday for payment of income tax on natural gas produced from oil and gas blocks awarded in the forthcoming licensing round, also extended the benefit to coal bed methane blocks.
Government has announced 70 oil and gas exploration blocks in the 8th round of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) and along side areas for extraction of gas from below coal seams (CBM) have also been offered. The Finance Bill had restricted the tax benefit to just the oil and gas blocks and today Mukherjee extended them to CBM too.
The benefit will be available prospectively from assessment year 2010-11 and subsequent assessment year.
source: NDTVPROFIT
Replying to the debate on the Finance Bill 2009, which was passed with some amendments in the Lok Sabha, he also announced that the service tax on new services proposed in his Budget would come into effect from September 1.
Maintaining that lower and middle income housing deserves to be supported to stimulate this segment of house owners, Mukherjee said one per cent interest subsidy would be available to individuals for loans up to Rs 10 lakhs for houses that do not cost more than Rs 20 lakhs.
He proposed to provide Rs 1,000 crore for this purpose. Giving yet another sop, the Minister said that the eligible deductions for assessees with severe disability will be raised from Rs 75,000 to Rs 1 lakh for purposes of Income Tax.
The Minister also extended the benefit of deductions in respect of interest paid on education loan for higher education to legal guardian of the student under Section 80E of the IT Act.
Similarly, he extended the sunset clause for tax holidays for industrial parks by another two years up to March 2011, in a bid to provide stimulus to infrastructure sector in the wake of economic slowdown.
Mukherjee said the interest subsidy on home loans will be routed through the scheduled commercial banks and housing companies registered with the National Housing Bank. It will be available for a period of one year.
He said he also proposed to provide further stimulus to the housing sector by allowing tax holiday in respect of profits derived from projects approved between April 1, 2007 and March 31, 2008, if they are completed on or before March 31, 2012.
The Minister expected the developers to pass on the benefit of tax holiday to homebuyers by appropriately reducing their prices. "I am sure that both the expenditure and tax-foregone initiatives would provide relief to a large segment of prospective home owners and help revive the real estate sector," he said.
Yet another concession he extended was the tax holiday on profits in respect of business processing, preserving and packaging of meat and meat products and poultry, marine and dairy products.
Mukherjee, who had in his Budget speech announced seven-year holiday for payment of income tax on natural gas produced from oil and gas blocks awarded in the forthcoming licensing round, also extended the benefit to coal bed methane blocks.
Government has announced 70 oil and gas exploration blocks in the 8th round of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) and along side areas for extraction of gas from below coal seams (CBM) have also been offered. The Finance Bill had restricted the tax benefit to just the oil and gas blocks and today Mukherjee extended them to CBM too.
The benefit will be available prospectively from assessment year 2010-11 and subsequent assessment year.
source: NDTVPROFIT
0 comments:
Post a Comment