Budget 2018: Jaitley's budget does not strike right chord with salaried class, no changes in individual income tax rate

Finance minister Arun Jaitley presented the Union Budget for FY 2017-18 in Parliament on Thursday. This budget held a lot of significance as it was Modi govt's last full fledged budget before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

While many economic experts felt that the budget would be a populist one, bringing in relief to the middle and the salaried class it left many surprised.

While most of the salaried class had great hopes with the non taxable income slab being raised to 3 lakh from the existing 2.5 lakhs, the govt decided otherwise to keep the rates unchanged. The only relief came by way of a standard deduction of Rs 40000 for the salaried class.

In his speech, Arun Jaitley said that the Budget 2018 would lay emphasis on agriculture and rural economy, health, infrastructure, senior citizens.

He said structural reforms will help the Indian economy become the fifth largest in the world very soon.

Here are the highlights of Arun Jaitley’s speech:

Personal/Corporate Tax

#Personal Income Tax: No change

#Relief to salaried tax: Standard deduction increased for transport and medical reimbursement to Rs 40,000 from Rs 15,000

#Rs 50,000 additional benefit to senior citizens for investment in mediclaim.

# Propose to tax long term capital gains exceeding Rs 1 lakh in listed stock at 10%.

# 100% tax deduction for the first five years to companies registered as farmer producer companies with a turnover of Rs. 100 crore and above.

Custom duty/Cess

# Imported electronics, including phones and TVs, will now get more expensive as government proposes to increase custom duty on mobiles from 15% to 20% and on some other mobile parts to 15%, and some parts of TVs to 15%.

# Propose to increase the health and education cess to 4%