New Income Tax Bill 2025: The simplified Income Tax Bill, half the size of the 1961 Income Tax Act, seeks to achieve tax certainty by minimising the scope of litigation and fresh interpretation, said the Income Tax (I-T) department on Thursday, February 13. According to the I-T department, the tax bill aims to simplify the tax system based on six core ‘SIMPLE’ principles, with ‘SIMPLE’ being an abbreviation.
Earlier today, the I-T Department took to microblogging platform ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) and said, “The Income-Tax Bill 2025 has been introduced in the Lok Sabha today. The Bill aims to simplify the tax system for all and is built on these core “SIMPLE” principles.”
The new bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha, has a word count of 2.6 lakh, lower than 5.12 lakh in the I-T Act. The number of sections is 536, as against 819 effective sections in the existing law. The number of chapters has also been halved to 23 from 47, according to the FAQ issued by the I-T department.
The Income Tax Bill 2025, has 57 tables, compared to 18 in the existing Act and removed 1,200 provisos and 900 explanations. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while introducing the Bill in the Lok Sabha, had said that “substantial changes” have been made in the Bill.
The number of words have been halved from 5.12 lakh, and sections reduced from 819 to 236. Following introduction, the Bill was referred to the select committee of the Lok Sabha and mandated to submit its report by March 10.