As part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat Package 3.0 announced by the Finance Minister, Income Tax relief has been announced for Real Estate Developers and Home Buyers by way of increase in Safe Harbour limit under IT Section 43CA & 56(2)(x) from 10% to 20%, applicable in the case of primary sale of residential units having value up to Rs. 2 crores for the period upto 30 June 2021.
Accordingly, circle rate shall be applicable, in such cases, only where the difference/ variation with sale/ purchase consideration exceeds 20%.
CBDT Press Release dt. 13/11/2020 : Income Tax relief for Real-estate Developers and Home Buyers
As part of the AatmaNirbhar Bharat Package 3.0 as announced by Hon’ble Finance Minister on 12th November, 2020, certain income tax relief measures were brought in for real-estate developers and home buyers.
Up to 2018, section 43CA of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (‘the Act’) provided for deeming of the stamp duty value (circle rate) as sale consideration for transfer of real-estate inventory in the case the circle rate exceeded the declared consideration. Consequentially, stamp duty value was deemed as purchase consideration in case of buyer under section 56(2)(x) of the Act.
In order to provide relief to real estate developers and buyers, the Finance Act, 2018, provided a safe harbour of 5%. Accordingly, these deeming provisions triggered only where the difference between the sale/ purchase consideration and the circle rate was more than 5%. In order to provide further relief in this matter, Finance Act, 2020 increased this safe harbour from 5% to 10%. Therefore, currently, the circle rate is deemed to be the sale/ purchase consideration for real estate developers and buyers only where the variation between the agreement value and the circle rate is more than 10%.
In order to boost demand in the real-estate sector and to enable the real-estate developers to liquidate their unsold inventory at a rate substantially lower than the circle rate and giving benefit to the home buyers, it has been decided to further increase the safe harbour from 10% to 20% under section 43CA of the Act for the period from 12th November, 2020 to 30th June, 2021 in respect of only primary sale of residential units of value up to Rs. 2 crore. Consequential relief by increasing the safe harbour from 10% to 20% shall also be allowed to buyers of these residential units under section 56(2)(x) of the Act for the said period. Therefore, for these transactions, circle rate shall be deemed as sale/ purchase consideration only if the variation between the agreement value and the circle rate is more than 20%.
Legislative amendments in this regard shall be proposed in due course.
Is it possible to understand this amendment with suitable example?