The annual speech on the Indian budget by the minister of finance is usually, presented to the Lok Sabha on the last day of February. Individuals with an annual income of five lakh rupees or less have their income tax reduced to a maximum of five per cent with a sliding step at lower levels. In the income tax bill, there is no other change in the higher income brackets, except that income between Rs 50 lakh to one crore will attract a surcharge of 10 per cent. The preamble to the personal income tax proposal was the highlighting of the low number of individuals who pay income tax in India, while there are a fairly large number of high net worth Indians. The ongoing schemes for low income housing have become popular and the proposal is to extend the scheme.

Source: The Telegraph February 01, 2017 22:23 UTC