Budget 2022: No relief for taxpayers; 30% tax on crypto profits; battery swapping policy and more

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the Budget for the 2022-23 fiscal on Tuesday. A massive capex boost was announced, more credit lines have been proposed for small businesses, and a push for digital banking and amendments to strengthen the bankruptcy law were among other key announcements.

However, against all expectations, Sitharaman did not tinker with the personal income tax rates. She also did not raise the standard deduction limit, which was widely anticipated in view of high inflation levels and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the middle class.

In this edition of the Budget Podcast, CNBCTV18.com’s Kanishka Sarkar gets in conversation with Preeti Khurana, Director of Advocacy and Regulation at Clear, and Vikas Singhania, CEO of TradeSmart to understand why no major relief was announced for the salaried taxpayers.

Khurana is of the view that the government has left income tax provisions were left untouched maybe because the tax filing date got extended and so there was no time to review the tax provisions yet.

It is clear from Budget 2022 that the government is focused on putting in place more compliance measures so that more and more people pay taxes, she said. The government has also included a penalty on updating the tax return even though it has permitted correcting omissions and errors in original income tax return within two years from the end of the assessment year, Khurana added.

Khurana also spoke about the surcharge on long-term capital gains capped, which the Finance Minister said, has been capped at 15 percent.

Meanwhile, Vikas Singhania, CEO of TradeSmart explained the 30 percent tax that’ll be charged on proceeds from the sale of digital assets, with no deductions allowed other than the cost of acquisition.

Singhania says that though the government did not come up with any specific regulation on cryptocurrency, with this move, it has in a way allowed transactions in the digital currency.

He also explained how the battery swapping policy proposed by Sitharaman in the Budget will help boost the electric vehicles segment.

The government has proposed to set up interoperability standards, considering the constraint of space in urban areas for setting up charging stations at scale. According to Singhania, this will help people overcome the hesitancy of buying EVs for long-distance travel purposes.