New income tax bill to be debated in monsoon parliament session

The new Income Tax Bill will be taken up for discussion in the monsoon session of Parliament, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday.

Replying to the discussions on the Finance Bill 2025 in the Lok Sabha, Sitharaman said the new income tax bill, which was introduced in the House on February 13, is currently being vetted by the Select Committee.

The Select Committee has been mandated to submit its report by the first day of the next session of Parliament.

"...we will take it (new income tax bill) up in the monsoon session," Sitharaman said.

The monsoon session of Parliament is usually convene in July and runs through August.

The simplified Income Tax Bill, which is half the size of the 1961 Income Tax Act, seeks to achieve tax certainty by minimising the scope of litigation and fresh interpretation, the Income Tax department had earlier said.

The new bill has a word count of 2.6 lakh, lower than 5.12 lakh in the I-T Act. The number of sections is 536 against 819 effective sections in the existing law.

The number of chapters has also been halved to 23 from 47.

The Income Tax Bill 2025 has 57 tables compared to 18 in the existing Act and removed 1,200 provisos and 900 explanations.