While presenting the General Budget 2016-17 in Lok Sabha today, the Union Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley said that pension schemes offer financial protection to senior citizens. He proposed to make withdrawal up to 40% of the corpus at the time of retirement tax exempt in the case of National Pension Scheme(NPS). In case of superannuation funds and recognized provident funds, including EPF, the same norm of 40% of corpus to be tax free will apply in respect of corpus created out of contributions made after 1.4.2016. Further, the annuity fund which goes to the legal heir after the death of pensioner will not be taxable in all three cases.

He also proposed a monetary limit for contribution of employer in recognized Provident and Superannuation Fund of Rs. 1.5 lakh per annum for taking tax benefit.

He proposed to exempt from service tax the Annuity services provided by the National Pension Scheme (NPS) and Services provided by EPFO to employees. Also, he proposed to reduce service tax on Single premium Annuity (Insurance) Policies from 3.5% to 1.4% of the premium paid in certain cases.

PIB

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