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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) assured people on Wednesday that it has no plans to permanently put a cap on withdrawal limits, asserting that the money belongs to the people. Addressing the media after the fifth bi-monthly monetary policy review, RBI Governor Urjit Patel said there will be restrictions only during the transition process resulting from demonetisation. “The money in the bank is yours,“ said Patel. “There are some controls on withdrawal, but only during this transition phase.“ The RBI had put a limit on withdrawal from automated teller machines and bank branches post demonetisation.Customers, for instance, can withdraw Rs.2,500 per day from ATMs that are recalibrated and Rs.2,000 from those yet to be recalibrated. They can withdraw up to Rs.24,000 from bank branches in a week. However, withdrawal limits for farmers have been fixed at Rs.25,000 a week. The central bank governor said that large quantities of currency notes in various denominations are in supply a...

Regulators often overstate the seriousness of the work they do to defend every measure adopted in regulations, however flawed As we move toward the implementation of the goods and services tax (GST) in India, corporations are forming task forces to assess the impact and update systems to conform to the proposed taxation structure. Of course, modifying IT systems is a priority and should be completed before the GST is implemented but we at Bain believe that the GST legislation provides an opportunity to consider a strategic and zerobased revamp of the entire inbound and outbound supply chain. After recent discussions with CEOs of top companies, it has become increasingly clear that left to operational executives, businesses will simply conform to GST requirements. It is imperative, however, for the leadership team to view this as a transformational opportunity with possible implications in the competitive environment. Companies should not simply seek to gain short-term cost redu...

Without doubt, the roll-out of GST will turn out to be the most significant and far-reaching indirect tax reform that India has ever seen. It is going to impact almost all industries and businesses, some more than others. In the process, it will create a common Indian marketplace and reduce the cascading effect of taxes. To put it succinctly, GST will subsume all indirect taxes and create just one rate for the entire nation. In view of the importance of this legislation, it makes sense to be fully prepared for it. Here is a list of 10 steps that corporate entities can take to implement GST in a hassle-free manner. 1. Upgrade ERP systems: In order to evaluate new tax structures, other cost implications, companies need to upgrade their ERP systems. This is essential to accommodate the complexities of calculating GST. 2. Get a fix on which software modules need to be changed: As GST will have more of an impact on data management and taxation, organizations need to look into their ...

Don't rush into a new tax without being prepared Given the virtually stalled progress on the goods and services tax (GST), it is increasingly unlikely that the government would be able to kick off the new tax by April 2016. The best bet would be to target September and work towards that goal in right earnest. The government had shown the good sense to keep the option open to initiate the new tax at a date later than the original target of April 1, with the finance minister having gone on record to say that April 1was a very tight deadline. Now that many state governments and their finance ministers are busy putting out the fires lit by demonetisation, they are unlikely to focus on the business of getting GST going. Most countries that have adopted a value-added tax like the GST had given their economic entities at least 12 months, after notifying the rules, to gear themselves up for compliance. Indians are, of course, from a different planet and can do the same task in half the ti...