April 1 Financial Rule Change Highlights: ITR, salary, railway ticket cancellation norms, LPG prices to be revised

Four new cities added to list of metros allowed to claim 50% House and Rental Allowance (HRA) exemption, under the Old Tax regime.

Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune have been added to the list which includes Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai.

The changes aim to make the taxation system easier for businesses and taxpayers to use.

• The number of tax rules has been reduced from 399 to 190.
• The number of tax forms has been reduced from 511 to 333.

There are no changes in the income tax slabs from 1 April. This is because during Budget 2026, there was no announcement of a change in the income tax slabs under both old and new income tax regimes. In the subsequent notifications of the Income Tax Act, 2025, and Income Tax Rules, 2026, there was also no mention of a change in the tax slabs.

As per the draft income tax rules, your PAN can become inoperative if you do not link it to your Aadhaar number within the prescribed time. This is an existing position under the draft Income-tax Rules.

If your PAN is inoperative, you cannot claim income-tax refunds, and no interest will be paid on such refunds for the period during which the PAN remains inactive.

The PAN can become operative again only after you complete Aadhaar linking and pay any prescribed fee, in accordance with the rules.

Until now, quoting PAN was not mandatory if your insurance premium was less than ₹50,000. The PAN is required only when the annual insurance premium exceeds the sum of ₹50,000. Under the draft rules, the requirement is proposed to be significantly expanded. Instead of focusing only on the premium amount, the draft requires PAN to be quoted for any account-based relationship with an insurance company. So, if this comes into effect, quoting PAN will become mandatory even if your premium is less than ₹50,000.

According to the current rules, quoting PAN is mandatory for immovable property transactions worth ₹10 lakh. The draft rules have proposed to increase this limit to ₹20 lakh.

As per the current rules, PAN is mandatorily required at hotels and restaurants for payments exceeding ₹50,000. However, the draft rules propose to relax this limit to ₹1 lakh.

The draft rules have relaxed compliance for motor vehicle transactions. The rules propose furnishing PAN details when purchasing or selling vehicles worth over ₹5 lakh. As per the existing rules, all motor vehicle transactions, except motorbikes, require mandatory quoting of PAN details.

It has been proposed to make quoting the PAN mandatory if you withdraw or deposit over ₹10 lakh in aggregate in a financial year.

However, if the transaction value exceeds ₹20 lakh, PAN must be quoted and verified, adding an additional layer of authentication.

"The objective behind revising the PAN quoting norms appears to be to align compliance requirements with present-day economic realities. The idea is to ease the reporting burden for routine transactions, while at the same time tightening monitoring of high-value financial dealings through better data tracking — ultimately improving transparency and helping curb tax evasion," Abhishek Soni, CEO of Tax2Win, told Livemint.

Starting 1 April, 2026, salaried employees are set to see a massive overhaul in their corporate perks as the new Income Tax Act, 2025, gets implemented. The changes in corporate benefits rules under the Income Tax Rules, 2026, were notified by the government earlier in March.

Similarly, the annual cap for Gifts and Vouchers is moving from ₹5,000 to ₹15,000, finally acknowledging a decade of inflation, CA Kaushik noted.

“By raising the limits on meals and loans while jacking up the tax on luxury perks like cars and large houses, the government is forcing a choice: either stick to a lean, cash-heavy salary or pay the full market price for your corporate lifestyle,” he added.

Another tax benefit that salaried individuals will get is that of the meal vouchers, with the tax-free limit of coupons increasing.

“The tax-free limit for Meal Vouchers (like Pluxee/Sodexo) is quadrupling from ₹50 to ₹200 per meal. If you get two meals a day, that’s a potential tax-free benefit of over ₹1.05 Lakh per year,” he said.

The tax-free limit for Interest-Free Loans from employer is jumping 10x from a measly ₹20,000 to a much more realistic ₹2 Lakh.

“This is a huge win for employees taking small personal or emergency advances, as the “interest benefit” won’t be added to your salary unless you cross that new threshold,” CA Kaushik said.

• If your employer provides a 1.8L engine SUV for mixed use, the taxable perquisite value is spiking from roughly ₹2,400 to ₹7,000 per month.
• Add a chauffeur, and you’re looking at another ₹3,000 monthly hit (up from ₹900), according to CA Nitin Kaushik.
• For a senior executive, this simple shift could add over ₹1.2 lakh to taxable income annually, effectively canceling out any minor slab benefits, he added.

The monthly valuation of company car perquisite (motor car) has been moved higher in the new Income Tax Rules, 2026, resulting in a higher tax outgo. If your company has given you a car with an engine capacity of up to 1.6 litres, the taxable value of the prerequisite linked to the same has been moved higher from ₹1,800 to ₹5,000, marking a ₹3,200 increase. This is applicable when you take your company car for both official and personal use.

NHAI is all set to hike the FASTag annual pass prices from 1 April. The existing price of ₹3,000 per year is set to be hiked to ₹3,075 per year.

The FASTag annual pass recharge can be done via the Rajmarg Yatra App or the official NHAI website. Once the one-time fee is paid, the annual pass gets activated on the vehicle's existing FASTag within two hours.

With the new fee structure set to come into effect from 1 April, frequent commuters have just a couple of days left to make the recharge at the old price.

The pass can be used across approximately 1,150 fee plazas on National Highways and National Expressways across the country.