Union Budget trims TCS, simplifies TDS to ease burden on taxpayers

The budget has made an effort to simplify tax collection by proposing threshold and rate changes in tax collected at source (TCS), offering significant relief to overseas travellers, parents with children pursuing foreign education and those going for medical treatment.TCS on education and medical remittances has been lowered to 2% from 5%. Foreign tour packages will also attract a 2% rate instead of 5% (less than ₹10 lakh) and 20% (beyond ₹10 lakh).According to Adhil Shetty, CEO of BankBazaar, this will « ease upfront cash-flow pressure and improve affordability ». While the ₹10 lakh threshold continues for education and medical remittances, it has been removed for overseas tour packages. For example, a family spending ₹15 lakh on a foreign holiday would earlier pay ₹3 lakh (20%) as TCS, which now falls to ₹30,000. Similarly, if the spending was ₹8 lakh, The TCS would have been ₹40,000 (5%) compared to just ₹16,000 now. Another key change affects property transactions when resident Indian buy from non-resident ones. Resident buyers can now deduct TDS on purchases of immovable property from non-residents using only their PAN-based challan, without needing a separate tax deduction and collection account number (TAN). This relaxation applies to resident individuals and Hindu Undivided Families, who were earlier required to obtain a TAN even for a one-time property transaction.