COVID-19 Impact On India And The Buildup To Union Budget 2021-22
We’ve been through this road before where we’ve been reminiscent of the life and times before COVID-19 came into the picture. The crippling impact that the pandemic had on the economy was for everyone to see, added to the human capital that was put in jeopardy. However, the turn of 2021 saw some signs of recovery – with the COVID vaccine rolled out and businesses picking up steam, people started to believe that a full-scale economic recovery might have just started.
In the midst of this frenzy, it was the common man who took the most heat – dealing with sudden job losses, monetary uncertainty, and with a lack of a general sense of direction as to what would happen if/when things get back to normal. But with normal 2.0 currently in its initial phase and with the worst of the pandemic hopefully behind India’s citizens, the focus now went to economic recovery – where the Union Budget 2021 was supposed to be a major event where people as well as businesses were hopeful for various amendments that’d help them ease through the impact of the pandemic.
Union Budget 2021-22 Speech:Highlights And Analysis From A Tax Point Of View
For starters, while everyone was hopeful that there’d be substantial tax relief from an income tax point of view for individuals, the Union Budget 2021 didn’t offer any provisions on that front and kept the tax rates/slabs unchanged.
But that doesn’t mean that the Budget didn’t offer anything constructive or of value.
What it did offer was relaxation in terms of reopening of tax assessments (reducing the time of reopening from 6 years to 3 years), a streamlined process of setting up one-person companies, to improve ease of doing business in India, increase in aspects threshold for compulsory tax audits, and proposals to further the cause of faceless appeals, which would inevitably ease the process of tax litigation.
Summarizing these key tax and financial proposals, we’ve prepared a comprehensive document for your perusal, which you can access for FREE and it is linked below:
The Finance Minister further announced various proposals – which covered aspects like affordable housing, GST measures, allowing more investment in the infrastructure sector, and increasing customs duty on various commodities – where the latter would help the domestic manufacturing sector to produce goods which are at par with the global market and also help the export market, with an aim to make India a global manufacturing hub.
The vision for an “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” (which translates to “Self-reliant India”) had been laid down last year, and this Budget – even with its understated nature and the lack of new announcements was perhaps a statement that the Government would much rather work in the direction of fulfilling past promises and commitments and look for ways to trigger economic recovery rather than go into uncharted waters with new announcements.
