The upcoming interim budget that will come before the Lok Sabha elections, could include new tax proposals, reported Business Standard, citing sources.

According to the report, sources familiar with the development, said that discussions have already been held at the top to include a number of direct tax announcements in finance minister Arun Jaitley’s speech. However, no final decision has been made, the report added.

“There are short finance bills which accompany the interim budgets, just to extend the prevailing tax rates to April-July. So, all that needs to be done is to add new tax proposals in the finance bill. The problem is that once the finance bill is tabled, you can expect political opposition. That is something for the leadership to deal with,” an official aware of the deliberations was quoted as saying in the report.

The development would be interesting as only a very limited number of tax-related announcements are made in budget speeches immediately preceding a Lok Sabha election, the report added.