Budget 2022: Govt could ease compliance norms for start-ups, says Piyush Goyal

Union Minister Piyush Goyal has said that the government is looking to ease the compliance burden for the start-up ecosystem in India and is aiming to give the new-age firms more freedom of operation. The minister, while releasing a report on the tech start-up ecosystem in 2021 by industry body NASSCOM said that exemption of angel taxes, self-certification, digitisation and simplification of tax procedures were some of the initiatives which were undertaken by the government to help the start-up community grow.

  “The idea is to remove the compliance burden as much as possible. We have been able to remove more than 26,500 compliances and decriminalize 7000 offences and are talking to the stakeholders, legal experts in helping us shape a regulatory framework that ensures the start-ups get the same amount of freedom as the information technology, communications sector did. The focus is how we can reduce the compliance burden more. We are definitely looking at self-regulation for equal opportunities” Goyal said.   The statement comes at a crucial juncture when various new-age tech firms, industry bodies have written to the government over helping the industry with simplification of regulatory hassles in terms of government certification, domestic, overseas listings and well as tax-benefits.   The Indian Venture Capital Association has reportedly proposed a new definition for start-ups where the revenue threshold, timeline of operations should be relaxed. Another concern has been registration of the start-ups with inter-ministerial board to avail tax exemptions.   Out of the 65,000 start-ups in the country only 270 start-ups are registered with inter-ministerial board set up by Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) , which can avail various tax benefits like tax holidays on Employee Stock Option Plans (ESOPs), tax holiday of 3 years, amongst others.