The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has suggested exempting proceeds on sale of residential properties from capital tax gains if they are used to fund a start-up, PTI reported. This has been done keeping in mind that upcoming entrepreneurs often have to sell their residential properties to raise capital for their businesses. To make this possible, DPIIT has suggested changes to Section 54B of the Income Tax Act. DPIIT has also reportedly recommended reducing the shareholding requirements of start-up founders from to 20%, from the current requirement of 50%, along with reducing the mandatory holding period from 5 years to 3 years, the report said. These suggestions are a part of DPIIT’s "Startup India Vision 2024". Amending Section 79 of the Income Tax Act has also been proposed to reduce promoters’ shareholding requirements to carry forward losses to 26%, from the current 100% requirement, according to the PTI report. Other suggestions include setting up 50,000 new start-ups, and 500 new incubators and accelerators in the country by 2024. The vision document further proposes 100 innovation zones in urban local bodies, deployment of entire corpus of Rs 10,000 crore Fund of Funds, and expanding CSR (corporate social responsibility) funding to incubators. Start-ups in India: A snapshot How has the government aided start-ups so far? Start-up India was launched in January 2016 to help foster start-ups in the country. On November 27, 2019, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal informed Lok Sabha that the initiative has been launched in all states and…
