As the government focused on easing tax compliance and bringing down income tax rates for the middle class, it also gave weightage to making procedures hassle free for businesses. To clear the clutter and reduce the burden of looking at a plethora of norms, as many as 39,000 compliances were dropped by the Indian government in the union budget.
Apart from section 276A of the income tax act, which even provides for rigorous imprisonment of up to two years, the Finance Minister decriminalised 3,400 legal provisions. The government rationale behind this is to decriminalise minor offences and increase the ease of doing business in India.
Although no new prosecutions will be started under the provisions from April this year, the ones ongoing will not be stopped. A legal mandate will also be introduced to make PAN the single identifier for all digital systems, across specified government agencies.
