New Delhi : Organization of Real Estate Developers – National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO) has asked the government to make various tax exemptions and other provisions to encourage developers and home buyers in 2018-19 Budget, so that the supply of new homes and buying capacity of the buyers can be increased. This will help the government achieve the target of giving home to all by 2022.

In this regard, NAREDCO has handed over the former memorandum before the budget to the government. Giving information about this, NAREDCO Chairman Rajiv Talwar said that the demands for granting industry status to the real estate sector is pending for a long time. The government should help the developers in making better access to funds and also to increase demand for the sector, they should also announce more incentives for home buyers, as the real estate sector is facing very difficult challenges at the moment.

The most important demand of NAREDCO is that for under construction houses, the rates of GST should be reduced from 18% to 12% and the consideration of cost of land should be increased from 33% to 50% by the total cost of the house while implementing GST. This will allow the property tax rate to be reduced to 6%.

Naradco has suggested that the entire housing sector should be brought under the PMAY (Pradhan Mantri Aawas Yojna) of up to 30 to 150 square meters of carpet area, under section 80 IBA of the IT Act 2016, which is currently limited up to 60 square meters of the carpet area.This will encourage private developers creating affordable houses to start home building plans at large and the government will also be able to meet the requirement of 20 million households by 2022. Section 80 IBA provides deduction of 100 percent tax exemption in such profits from such business.