Finance Minister Shrimati Nirmala Sitharaman introduced the Finance Bill, 2023 in the Loksabha on 1st February 2023 after presenting the Union Budget 2023.
This is her fifth and last full-fledged Budget since the formation of the 17th Loksabha in 2019 and so is the Finance Bill. The Loksabha election is due in the next year 2024.
Prior to 1999, the Union Budget was presented in the evening every year in India. The pattern changed in 1999 when the then Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha of NDA government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee started the tradition of presenting the budget at 11 am. Since then, the Union Budget is presented during the day.
Also, the Union Budget was presented on the last working day of February till the year 2016. In 2017, former finance minister Shri Arun Jaitley changed the tradition to February 1.
Finance Bill 2023 aims to provide for income tax rates for the financial year 2022-23 and advance tax rates for the FY 2023-24 as well as TDS rates for the upcoming financial year.
The Union Budget is also known as the annual financial statement as it is a yearly statement of estimated receipts and expenditures of the government. Union Budget 2023 provides the statement of the estimated receipts and expenditures of the Government of India for the year 2023-24.
The Finance Bill is introduced only in Lok Sabha immediately after the presentation of the Union Budget. The finance bill gives effect to the government's financial proposals on the taxation front.
Legislation which is yet to be passed as a law by the Houses of Parliament is termed a Bill. As per Rule 219 of the Rules of Procedure of Lok Sabha, a Finance Bill means the Bill ordinarily introduced in each year to give effect to the financial proposals of the Government of India for the next following financial year and includes a Bill to give effect to supplementary financial proposals for any period.
As in the last two years 2021 and 2022, the voluminous budget documents were not physically printed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and are distributed electronically to the Members of Parliament (MPs).
This is for the third time in independent India since the presentation of independent India's first budget on November 26, 1947, the Budget documents containing the income and expenditure statement of the Union Government along with the Finance Bill for FY 2022-23 have gone “paperless”. The government refrained from printing hard copies of the budget documents in the wake of the safety issues posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Due to electronic Budget documents, the finance minister doesn’t need to carry either a bahi-khata or a briefcase to carry the Budget documents. In 2019, finance minister Nirmala Sitharman abandoned the practice of carrying a leather briefcase and instead chose the more traditional bahi-khata. This year the budget documents were carried in a digital tablet wrapped in a traditional 'bahi-khata' style pouch.
Other related articles on Budget 2023
Finance Minister Presents Finance Bill 2023 after Union Budget 2023 in Loksabha
Download Finance Bill, 2023 (PDF) as introduced in Loksabha
Download Memorandum Explaining the Provisions in the Financial Bill 2023
Income Tax announcements in Budget Speech: Union Budget 2023
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