A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis Of The New Taxation Regime: Trends, Challenges, And Taxpayer Responses In India

Abstract

India's shift from a deduction-heavy income tax structure to the concessional, exemption-light system introduced 
under Section 115BAC has generated a substantial and fast-growing body of scholarship since 2020. Yet that 
scholarship remains scattered across regional journals, doctoral repositories, and government circulars, with 
few attempts to draw the threads together. This review consolidates thirty peer-reviewed articles, working papers, 
and official reports published between 2017 and early 2026 to trace how researchers have measured taxpayer 
response to the reform. The synthesis covers three overlapping strands: compliance behavior and administrative 
simplification, the effect of withdrawn deductions on savings and investment patterns, and the demographic 
determinants age, income bracket, and financial literacy that shape whether an individual opts into the new 
structure or stays with the old one. Adoption data drawn from CBDT filings show the share of taxpayers under 
the new regime rising from roughly 37 percent in FY 2023-24 to above 70 percent once it became the default, a 
trajectory that itself has become a recurring data point in the literature[1][2]. The review finds that most existing 
studies rely on small, city-specific survey samples, seldom triangulated against actual filing data, and that 
longitudinal work on savings behavior remains thin. Methodological convergence around chi-square and ANOVA 
testing of survey responses is noted, alongside a near-absence of panel data approaches. The paper closes by 
identifying gaps that future Indian tax-policy research would do well to address.