The parliamentary committee appointed by the Lok Sabha Speaker to scrutinise the new Income Tax Bill, 2025, will present its report in the lower house on the first day of the monsoon session on July 21.
The 31-member Select Committee is chaired by BJP leader Baijayant Panda and was appointed by Lok Sabha Speaker, Om Birla. It has already made 285 suggestions to the new Bill, which it adopted in its report during its July 16 meeting. The report will now be tabled in the House for further action.
The new Income Tax Bill, 2025, was introduced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Lok Sabha on February 13, and is set to replace the six-decade-old 1961 Income Tax Act.
Also Read: Parliament panel gives 285 suggestions on Income Tax Bill-2025
The ‘simplified’ Income Tax Bill is half the size of the original Act, and seeks to achieve tax certainty by minimising the scope of litigation and fresh interpretation, said officials.
While introducing the Bill in the Lok Sabha, Sitharaman had said that “substantial changes” had been made in it which include a lower word count of 2.6 lakh as compared to the previous 5.12 lakh; a slash in the number of sections from 819 to 536; and a decrease in the number of chapters from 47 to 23. The total word count has now come down by 34,547.
The new Income Tax Bill 2025 has 57 tables compared to 18 in the existing Act, with 1,200 provisos and 900 explanations removed.
Provisions relating to exemptions and TDS/TCS have been made crispier in the Bill by putting them in a tabular format, while the chapter for not-for-profit organisations has been made comprehensive with use of plain language, as per the I-T department.
In a move aimed at making the bill more tax-friendly, the term ‘tax year replaces ‘previous year’ as mentioned in the Income Tax Act, 1961. It has also done away with the concept of ‘assessment year’. So, unlike now, when the tax for income earned in the previous year (say 2023-24) is paid in the assessment year (say 2024-25), only the term ‘tax year’ would be used in the simplified bill.
The Monsoon session of Parliament is scheduled to sit from July 21 to August 21, 2025.
Follow us
