No fresh taxes in please-all Maharashtra budget

MUMBAI: Stamp duty concessions across the board, hefty concessions on housing for the poor, subsidies for educational and housing loans, a Rs 1,000 crore allocation for Mumbai, 3% more DA to government employees and an additional grant for Marathi film makers, are some of the highlights of the â€œplease allâ€� Budget presented by Maharashtraâ€™s finance minister, Jayant Patil. There are no new taxes. Mr Patil on Monday achieved the rare feat of presenting the Budget of the countryâ€™s most industrialised state for the sixth time in a row. The Congress-NCP government, which came back to power in the â€˜04 elections, had retained Mr Patil as its finance minister. Mr Patilâ€™s last Budget had a revenue deficit of over Rs 9,000 crore. This yearâ€™s budgetary exercise, however, is expected to result in a revenue surplus of Rs 40 crore for the state exchequer. â€œOur tax collection has improved a lot. The lowering of taxes has helped in widening the stateâ€™s tax base. This has helped me in presenting a surplus Budget,â€� Mr Patil told ET. The Budget also promises to bring the stateâ€™s fiscal deficit down from last yearâ€™s Rs 13,500 crore to Rs 8,000 crore. This is the first revenue surplus Budget in the last 12 years, Mr Patil said. If the finance minister is to be believed, the stateâ€™s tax collection is expected to record a gain of over 20%, taking it to Rs 50,000 crore. Probably wary of the â€˜anti-poorâ€™ image it may create, state finance ministers generally prefer not to be seen helping Mumbai. But Mr Patil reversed the trend when he announced a Rs 1,000 crore allocation for the state capital. â€œMumbaiâ€™s infrastructure needs to be augmented. This is just a beginning on that front,â€� he said, going on to list the various infrastructure projects for the city. But this came only after he announced a slew of measures for the â€œrural poorâ€�. His Budget offers stamp duty exemptions on housing loans up to Rs 1 lakh and a 50% concession for those up to Rs 10 lakh. All educational loans have been exempted from stamp duty. With an eye on commodities market growth, Mr Patilâ€™s Budget offers a 90% stamp duty reduction on the marketâ€™s transactions, while the concession for trading in government securities would be 95%. The stamp duty on mortgages has been reduced to 0.5% from the current 1%. The Budget has also lowered the court fee on probates and letters of administration to 5% from 7.5%. It offers administrative relief under sales tax to copyrights of video and cinematographic films with retrospective effect from January 1, â€˜00.

No fresh taxes in please-all Maharashtra budget

Stamp duty concessions across the board, hefty concessions on housing for the poor, subsidies for educational and housing loans, a Rs 1,000 crore allocation for Mumbai are some of the highlights of the “please all” Budget presented by Maharashtra'...

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