In the July 2019 Budget, the government provided an additional deduction of interest, amounting to Rs 1.5 lakh, for loan taken to purchase an affordable house.

FM proposed to extend the eligibility of this deduction by one more year, to March 31, 2022. The additional deduction of Rs 1.5 lakh shall therefore be available for loans taken up till March 31, 2022, for the purchase of an affordable house.

Further, to keep up the supply of affordable houses, FM proposed that affordable housing projects can avail a tax holiday for one more year – till March 31, 2022.

To promote supply of Affordable Rental Housing for migrant workers, Sitharaman proposed to allow tax exemption for notified Affordable Rental Housing Projects.

REITs

Debt Financing of InVITs and REITs by Foreign Portfolio Investors will be enabled by making suitable amendments in the relevant legislations. This will further ease access of finance to InVITS and REITs thus augmenting funds for infrastructure and real estate sectors.

In the previous Budget, the government had abolished the Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT) in order to incentivise investment. Dividend was made taxable in the hands of shareholders. Now, in order to provide ease of compliance, FM proposed to make dividend payment to REIT/ InvIT exempt from TDS.

Further, as the amount of dividend income cannot be estimated correctly by the shareholders for paying advance tax, FM proposed to provide that advance tax liability on dividend income shall arise only after the declaration/payment of dividend. Also, for Foreign Portfolio Investors, FM proposed to enable deduction of tax on dividend income at lower treaty rate.

Infrastructure

A total of 702 km of conventional metro is operational and another 1,016 km of metro and RRTS is under construction in 27 cities. Two new technologies i.e., ‘MetroLite’ and ‘MetroNeo’ will be deployed to provide metro rail systems at much lesser cost with same experience, convenience and safety in Tier-2 cities and peripheral areas of Tier-1 cities. https://www.homeonline.com/

Centre will provide funding to:

Kochi Metro Railway Phase-II of 11.5 km at a cost of Rs 1,957.05 crore
Chennai Metro Railway Phase-II of 118.9 km at a cost of Rs 63,246 crore
Bengaluru Metro Railway Project Phase 2A and 2B of 58.19 km at a cost of Rs 14,788 crore
Nagpur Metro Rail Project Phase-II and Nashik Metro at a cost of Rs 5,976 crore and Rs 2,092 crore respectively