Budget 2025: Modi government to simplify income tax filing rules, says report

Budget 2025 expectations: India’s government plans to simplify its income tax filing rules to make it less tedious for taxpayers to comply with the law and help cut down on disputes that have ballooned to more than $120 billion over the past decade.
A proposed revamp of the Income-tax Act of 1961 is currently being finalized and will likely be issued for public consultation around mid-January, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified as the information isn’t public. The revised legislation will then be released in the government’s budget, expected in early February, they said.
The changes involve simplifying the language and rationalizing information by using formulas and tables, and won’t include any adjustments to tax rates and policy, the people said.
The Finance Ministry didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
India has been trying to modernize its tax laws for decades to reduce the bureaucratic burden on taxpayers and boost compliance. Tax disputes have more than doubled to 10.5 trillion rupees ($123 billion) in the decade through the fiscal year ended March 2023. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced in July that a comprehensive review of the tax legislation will be completed in six months to make the rules more taxpayer-friendly.
Here are some of the proposed changes, according to people familiar with the discussions: