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Below the Quote on Pre-budget expectations on Indirect Tax by Gunjan Prabhakaran, Partner & Leader, Indirect Tax, BDO India

A. Expectations from Customs and SEZ perspective:

• SEZ perspective: Clarity on the future of SEZ law (e.g. continuation of present SEZ Act or introduction of proposed DESH bill) specially in the context of the first 100 days plan of MOC with respect to changes in SEZ law (NFE, payment of input taxes rather than Customs duty on DTA supplies by SEZ, etc.) and the steps to generate economies of scale.
• Customs Law perspective: Continued rationalisation of customs duties to promote domestic manufacturing. Many of the customs exemptions are facing a sunset on 30th September and the requirement to extend the validity of exemptions to meet the requirements of the respective sectors needs to be assessed.
  On the import of products, where the Indian industry is vulnerable to imports, there may be imposition of safeguard duties. Introduction of defined process and timelines for finalisation of provisional bill of entries and adding grounds for amendment of bill of entries, to bring ease of doing business. Tweaking the MOOWR scheme to specifically allow depreciation for removal of used capital goods (like EOU etc).

C. Other expectations:

• The new Central Excise Bill 2024, which was released for public comments, is likely to replace the existing Central Excise Act 1944.
• Introduction of incentive schemes: The extension of benefits under schemes like the production-linked incentives (PLI) for the EV sector and the continuation of subsidies under the FAME scheme are anticipated to support industry growth and environmental goals to be achieved by 2030. Further, PLI 3.0 should also help government in promoting make in India and reduce its dependency on imports for items like toys, semiconductor, chemicals, pharma APIs, telecom and networking equipments etc

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