Ahead of Budget 2020, CNBC-TV18’s special show ‘Budget Hotline’ gives its viewers an opportunity to put forth all their tax queries as well as share their expectations from the budget.

Speaking on general expectation of cut in the personal income tax, Mayur Shah of EY India said, “I do not expect much changes in the budget as far as rates are concerned. However, I believe that 37 percent of surcharge can go down a bit.”

Shah also does not expect a change in tax slabs either. “Change in tax slabs would help but doubt the government would do that because with great difficulty the government has tried to bring most of the people under the tax net and by increasing the slab rate they would be removing them from the coverage. So, I doubt there will be anything in that respect which will happen,” he said.

Answering a query if there was a scope of the government bringing back exemption on medical expenses, Shah, said it was unlikely because standard deduction was introduced in lieu of medical expenses.

With regards to another query about offsetting losses from equity investments to get a tax credit, Shah said, “As far as losses are concerned, generally it never gets bifurcated based on the capital asset which you own. It gets bifurcated between short term and long term. So, if I have a short term loss, I can set it off against short term gains as well as long term gains. But if I have a long term loss, then I can set it off against only long term capital gains. There are situations where a person may not be able to set off the entire loss, then he can carry it forward for another 8 years and set it off against the gains, which will arise in future.”