Mild change in personal tax slabs which will cause Rs. 2000 saving annually for a person seems irrelevant. Raising tax exemption to Rs. 5 lakhs for citizens above 80 years does not provide any logical reasoning or benefit. Taxing already bloated airfares is not logical as air travel costs in India in comparison to average income is already very high.

IT industry related: No extension on STPI benefits is very demoralizing. SEZ units being levied with MAT 18.5%  now is, going back on the commitment of keeping SEZ units tax free for some more years to come. The assumption being made that MAT will be refunded as a set-off against full tax paid at a later date implies that the government expects IT exports to be taxed at full rate in future. For the domestic IT industry the indicators are very positive with some clear picture likely to emerge on IT budgets & planning that e governance projects will have.

The FM has said that 5 large projects of the government namely Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), Tax Information Network (TIN), National Pension Scheme (NPS) Goods & Services Tax (GST) and National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) will be put under an IT enablement process besides there are many other initiatives announced for creating a National Knowledge Network, Providing bandwidths to Gram Panchayats etc. 

The Author is Hanuman Tripathi, Group Managing Director, Infrasoft Technologies Limited