CII Pre-Budget Memorandum: Budget 2024: Industry body Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) on Tuesday submitted its pre-budget memorandum to the government. In this memorandum, CII has not only presented demands related to the expectations of the industry to the government, but has also put forward demands like giving some relief in income tax to individual taxpayers and increasing MNREGA wages. CII has advocated giving tax relief to the common people and increasing the daily wages under MNREGA to boost consumer demand. CII has said that taxpayers with an annual income of up to Rs 20 lakh should definitely be given some relief. The central government will present this year’s full budget (Upcoming Budget 2024) next month. Due to being an election year, the interim budget was presented on February 1.
A part of the dividend received from RBI should be spent on increasing Capex: CII
In his pre-budget memorandum to Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra, CII President Sanjiv Puri suggested reducing excise duty on petrol and diesel, rationalising capital gains taxes and maintaining corporate taxes at current levels. CII has also suggested that the government can use a part of the Rs 2.11 lakh crore dividend received from the Reserve Bank (RBI) to increase capital expenditure (Capex) by 25 per cent in FY25. This will help boost demand by accelerating economic activities and will also help in increasing public capital expenditure as well as private capital expenditure. To boost consumer demand, CII has also suggested some relief in income tax for taxpayers with taxable income up to Rs 20 lakh in the upcoming budget to be presented in Parliament by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman next month.
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PM Kisan amount should be increased
To put more disposable income in the hands of taxpayers and boost consumption, CII also suggested that the MNREGA minimum wage may be revised from Rs 267 per day to Rs 375 per day in FY24, as suggested by the ‘Expert Committee on Fixation of National Minimum Wage’. It also suggested increasing the amount of direct benefit transfer under PM Kisan from Rs 6,000 per year to Rs 8,000 per year.
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Demand for amendment in capital gains tax
CII has also demanded amendment in capital gains tax. The industry body says that the Long Term Capital Gains (LTCG) tax rates should be changed to 10 percent on financial assets and 20 percent with indexation benefit on other assets. CII says that for this the definition of long term should be 12 months for financial assets and 36 months for non-financial assets. CII has also suggested that the rate of short term capital gains tax on financial assets should be 15 percent.