Budget 2025: How to Read and Understand the Documents FM Sitharaman Will Present
An overview of the government expenses for the coming year, the schemes and programs proposed to be undertaken during the same year, and changes in taxes that are expected to happen.

Budget 2025: The budget speech of the finance minister in the Lok Sabha is usually considered the highlight of any budget. It gives an overview of the government expenses for the coming year, the schemes and programs proposed to be undertaken during the same year, and changes in taxes that are expected to happen. Well, the budget is not only about the speech. After the being tabled, members will have to sift through about a dozen documents in order to decipher the fine print of the budget. This article will explain briefly what to look for in these budget-related documents.
The speech in Parliament consists in fact of two parts. It is in Part One where the government speaks more on its vision of launching new programs, allocation of funds for certain welfare schemes, the incentives that drive development, economic expansion and job creation, and the fiscal situation of the economy. For example, the finance minister has announced in the July budget of 2024 plans that will incentivize job creation, enhance women's participation in the workforce, and provide housing near workplaces.
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Part Two deals with taxation, especially controversial changes affecting personal income tax and corporate profits, customs duties and fuelling up reforms on compliance burden, so that all complying with tax laws in India would find life a little more bearable. No tax changes with respect to GST are allowed to be notified in this budget since these get decided by the GST Council consisting of the union finance minister and all the state finance ministers. In Part B of the speech last year, a measure of relief was provided for small taxpayers opting for the new tax regime, and customs duty changes were also announced in the last budget.
The annexures of the speech copy provide some detail concerning the announcements made in Parts A and B.
This document gives an overall impression of the actual figures involved in the preparation of a budget. In other words, it summarizes the receipts/expenditure budget. Thus, it shows how much the government expects to earn from taxes and other sources including disinvestment and what it intends to spend on main heads of expenditure including allocation of flagship programmes as well as its deficits. This document is useful for those who do not want to go into minute details of the budget.
It is also pretty simple for anybody not getting into hard numbers or the jargon of tax laws. They explain the changes proposed by the Finance Bill to give effect to budget announcements pertaining to tax laws. Readers interested in the tax laws and others who wish to understand changes in income tax and direct taxes may keep these documents.
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This document is meant, in general, for chartered accountants and lawyers. All changes proposed by the finance minister to the tax laws require the approval of both houses of Parliament before they may come into operation. The Finance Bill contains all proposed changes to income tax law, customs duties, excise laws, and all other laws addressing such matters as benami property, black money, and anti-avoidance. The Parliament discusses this Bill and may propose changes. Only when this Bill becomes law shall any tax changes proposed by the finance minister come into operation.
These documents give fine details about every rupee that the government plans to raise and spend, and that is of special interest to economists, those dealing with public finance, and those working in the field of development. The aforementioned Revenue budget document catalogs all the sources of revenues i.e. taxes, interest, loans, transfers from RBI, disinvestment and the rest. It shows revenue collection patterns of the same. The Expenditure budget document outlines the expenditure plans for every ministry for every program and scheme, the amount of transfers to states, and subsidies to be transferred to citizens and businesses.
These documents are further accompanied by a statement on how the government is managing fiscal deficits and a statement assessing the growth prospects of the economy with some determined underlying assumptions.
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