Health Insurance: Recommendation for Budget 2021-22

Nilesh Mejari, Chief Financial Officer, Universal Sompo General Insurance said that the Covid 19 pandemic has affected economies across the planet. This pandemic has affected both big and small nations adversely. There are lots of expectations from the upcoming budget 2021 as the Coronavirus pandemic has slowed down the overall growth of the country, leaving several people unemployed.

Various sectors and industries are expecting reforms from this Budget. The General Insurance sector deserves a higher budget allocation in the upcoming Union Budget 2021-22, however, the pandemic has proved the indispensable nature of having a safety net when it comes to healthcare costs.
 

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Increase in threshold limit in case of Health insurance premium paid and available deduction under section 80D of the Act:

Currently, deduction under section 80D is available for Rs. 25,000/- and Rs. 50,000/- premium paid for health insurance purchase by an individual for self and parents respectively. The above premium sum insured available to individual and parent is Rs. 15,00,000/- and Rs. 10,00,000/- respectively. We recommend that with experience of COVID 19 the above sum insured amount is not sufficient, so the medical health insurance premium limit given under section 80D needs to increase in order to increase the sum assured amount. 
 
Section 194-O- Sale of Insurance policies through e-commerce platform should be out of tax net:

A broker is typically receiving a predetermined amount of commission from an insurance company depending on the number of leads generated by it or on a per insurance policy materialized through him. The aforesaid commission cannot be associated with undertaking an activity of solicitation of insurance policies through an e-commerce platform maintained by a broker. Thus, the sale of an insurance policy facilitated through a digital or electronic platform owned or operated, or maintained by an Insurance broker should be out of the purview of withholding tax compliance under section 194O of the Act
 
A separate deduction to the policyholders should be available for payments relating to travel insurance, home insurance, or personal accident insurance policy:

Currently a separate deduction is not available to policyholders who are purchasing other insurance policies related to home insurance (property insurance), travel insurance and personal accident insurance policy. In this current pandemic situation, it’s a need of the hour to be introduced under chapter VIA giving deduction benefit for expenditure incurred towards expenditure insured on General insurance policy viz Fire, Property, cyber, etc. other than Health Insurance which is already covered under Section 80D.