Union Budget 2008 good for Insurance and Investment
Union Finance Minister has proposed a wide range of reliefs for tax payers in his 2008-09 Budget proposals. Under this, the threshold limit of personal income tax have been increased from Rs 1.10 lakh to Rs.1.50 lakhs. The common man has waited long enough to know how the Government’s annual tax impact him and his lifestyles and the investment he undertakes. Here are the results. I have compiled some of the main features of Indian budget for year 2008.
- Plan expenditure fixed at Rs 2,43,000 crore and non plan expenditure at 5,74,000 crore.
- Fiscal deficit pegged at 3.1 per cent and revenue deficit at 1.4 per cent.
- Tax to GDP ratio increased from 9.2 per cent in 2004-05 to 12.5 per cent 2007-08.
- No change in peak rate of customs duty for non
- Customs duty on specified life saving drugs reduced from ten per cent to five per cent.
- Special Countervailing Duty on power imports.
- Excise duty on small cars reduced to 12 per cent from 16 per cent and hybrid cars to 14 per cent.
- Excise duty reduced from 16 to 8 per cent on water purification items.
- Duty on non filter cigarettes to be raised.
- Asset management service under mutual funds, services by stock exchanges to be brought under Services Tax net.
- Threshold for small service providers raised from Rs eight lakh to Rs 10 lakh.
- PAN requirement to be extended to all transactions in capital market subject to a threshold.
- 750 crore for upgradation of 300 ITIs in 25 districts.
- Rs 32,676 crore as subsidy to Public Distribution System.
- PDS through smart cards in Haryana and Chandigarh on pilot basis.
- Three schemes to be introduced for providing social security to unorganised sector workers.
- Sixth central pay commission to submit report by March 31, 2008.
These features shall help the Government a lot in keeping the inflation rates under control and as you might have noticed the current plan is very healthy for all insurance houses and also provides a lot of opportunities for common to invest and buy insurance deals
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