New Delhi, July 5 (KNN) In a bid to stimulate growth, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has announced few tax proposals in her maiden Budget 2019.

On Corporate Tax, she announced that all companies having annual turnover of 400 crores, will now be under the bracket of 25%. This will cover 99.3% of all the companies.

She said “Currently, the lower tax rate of 25% is applicable to firms with annual turnover of Rs 250 crore. I propose to widen this to all companies with annual turnover of up to Rs 400 crore. This will cover 99.3% of all companies.”

To resolve angel tax issue, startups who file declarations will not be subjected to scrutiny in valuation, she added.

In addition, to discourage practice of making business payments in cash, she proposed to levy TDS of 2% on cash withdrawal exceeding Rs 1 crore a year from a bank account.

Further she announced “Business establishments with annual turnover of Rs 50 crore will offer low-cost digital mode of payments to customers and no charges or merchant discount rates shall be imposed on customers as well as merchants.”

Above all, she proposed merging of 17 taxes into one with GST.

Thanking the taxpayers in part B of her speech, she said “Direct tax revenue increased to Rs 11.37 lakh crores from Rs 6.38 lakh crores.”