New Delhi. Before the budget was presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, there were many discussions about the working class and the middle class. The discussion was whether the Finance Minister is going to give more relief to the working class and the middle class in her budget or not. In fact, if we look at the common people, the maximum working class and the middle class come under the tax ambit. The main reason for this is that the basic tax exemption limit has been kept at Rs 3 lakh only. According to an estimate, those earning 5.5 lakh to 15 lakh rupees annually file the maximum income tax returns.
If we talk about salaried people and pensioners, till now they get a rebate of Rs 50000 per annum under standard deduction. This limit was fixed by the Modi government in 2019. Earlier, the Modi government had increased the standard deduction to Rs 40000 in 2018. The common discussion that has raised the hopes of salaried people and pensioners is that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman can increase the standard deduction to Rs 1 lakh per annum. At the same time, there has also been a discussion about increasing the limit of tax exemption under Section 80C of Income Tax.
Under Section 80C of Income Tax, if anyone deposits Rs 1.5 lakh annually in PPF or NSC, he can get tax exemption on that amount. It has been demanded for a long time that this exemption under Section 80C of Income Tax should be increased from Rs 1.5 lakh annually to Rs 2 lakh. This will also help the government to earn money for a long time and the salaried and middle class will also be able to save some money. Apart from standard deduction and Section 80C, there was also a lot of discussion that the income tax basic exemption can be increased to 5 lakhs instead of 3 lakhs. Along with this, the discussion of change in tax slab also gained momentum before the budget.