New Income Tax Bill: Is this an old red wine in a brand-new container? Experts claim this …

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Feb 13 tabled the brand-new Income Tax Bill in theParliament This was a site step as the whole 64-year-old earnings tax obligation regulation was revamped and the older complicated arrangements were made less complex and lucid in the middle of much excitement.

One of the vital disagreements provided by the Finance Minister was that the brand-new regulation will certainly minimize the range of lawsuits due to the fact that it is straightforward to comprehend bring about tax obligation assurance.

While the existing regulation has 823 web pages as modified in 2024 whereas the brand-new earnings tax obligation expense is spread out throughout 622 web pages. So, the brand-new regulation is much shorter by 201 web pages. There are a number of redundancies and go across referencing which have actually been eliminated. Among a number of modifications which attracted appreciation from taxpayers consist of the terminating of analysis and it will certainly be referred to as ‘tax year’.

But will the brand-new regulation minimize the range of lawsuits? Let us see what specialists claim on this. There are some contrarian voices. Some claim that it belongs to providing old win in the brand-new container while an additional legal accounting professional thinks that tax obligation arrangements have actually not been significantly modified.

Old red wine in brand-new container?

There are some specialists that think that this brand-new regulation is an old red wine in the brand-new container, which does not have unique ideas such as team taxes.

“The Bill seems to be a bunch-up and clean-up, old wine in new bottle exercise. The form gets simpler with no major changes to affect the substance. Being an attempt to revamp after 65 years, the expectation was of a contemporary novel code including newer concepts like group taxation, carry-back of losses, etc. But it seems the wait will be longer,” claims CA Anand Bathiya, President, Bombay Chartered Accountants’ Society.

Lower lawsuits in advance?

There is positive outlook that the brand-new regulation has actually streamlined the language, and technological terms have actually been changed. With this, there is assumption that the brand-new regulation will certainly minimize lawsuits.

“While the new Income Tax Bill, 2025 does not substantially alter the tax provisions, an attempt has been made to simplify the language and to replace the technical terms used in the existing law. The new Bill has done away with Provisos and Explanations, which at times causes interpretational issues and litigation. It is expected that that the new Bill will reduce litigation, but it would be interesting to see to what extent it reduces the litigation,” claims Mitesh Jain, Partner at Economic Laws Practice.

Additionally, the brand-new regulation does not attend to the continuous lawsuits, which– some think– must have been arranged.

“The Income-tax law should facilitate in reducing tax disputes going forward. However, the Finance Ministry should alongside focus on fast-tracking past litigation; particularly as a significant portion is still pending at the Commissioner (Appeals), first appellate authority. Resolving past litigation will truly be a move towards Viksit Bharat and improve taxpayer sentiments,” claims Prashant Bhojwani, Partner, Tax & & Regulatory solutions, BDO India.

However, Chirag Chauhan, a Mumbai- based legal acccountant, thinks that the currently cleared up tax obligation disagreements have actually currently been included in the brand-new Bill while there can be brand-new disagreements occurring out of brand-new arrangements such as the meaning of online electronic possessions.

“Someone can file a suit claiming that this asset does not fall into the definition of virtual digital assets. Besides there are some mistakes and ambiguities but they will be corrected by the time it becomes an Act. Even if it is the old wine, it is the refined one,” claims Chauhan.

Few facets continue to be

Some specialists think that there is still some range of cross referencing when it come to the existing earnings tax obligation regulation and there are some facets which still require factor to consider.

“While the attempt to make the law simple to understand is laudatory, a few aspects require consideration. For instance, the definition of income in the new Bill has more than 20 line items. The last line item classifies ‘any other income referred to in section 2(24) of the Income-tax Act, 1961’ as income as well. This would imply that to this extent, the new law would need to be read along with the existing act, which should ideally not be the case given the intent with which the new law has been proposed,” stated Himanshu Sinha, Partner, Tax Practice, Trilegal.