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The Lok Sabha rejected five amendments moved by the Rajya Sabha to pass the finance bill on Thursday, completing the budgetary exercise well before the start of the next financial year. However, finance minister Arun Jaitley invited suggestions from political parties – including the Congress and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) – to make electoral funding “more clean and transparent”. “I have an open invitation to all. Please suggest a better system that will ensure clean money and transparency to every extent possible,” he said. “I am only hearing adjectives like ‘clean’ and ‘transparent’. Please give me an ideal combination of the two. We are willing to consider a specific suggestion after we get one.” Jaitley said most of the donations received by political parties in the present scenario lack transparency, and stem from unclean money. “The harsh reality is, we continue to do politics on the basis of undeclared money. Because if we do it on the basis of declared money... somebody...

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Thursday issued an order that all designated offices of the incometax department which can accept declarations under the black money window of Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) will remain open till midnight of March 31. "The last date for making declaration under PMGKY is March 31. Therefore, in order to facilitate the filing of declarations even after the office hours on the last date, the CBDT, hereby directs that the designated offices for receiving the declarations under PMGKY shall remain open till the midnight of March 31 in all jurisdictions," CBDT order said. The CBDT is the policymaking body of the incometax department. Aperson or entity that opts for PMGKY will have to pay 49.9 per cent tax, whereasaperson who does not opt will facearate of 77.25 per cent. Business Standard New Delhi,31st March 2017

Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das on Thursday said the goods and services tax (GST) would hurt the shadow economy. The indirect tax regime would also raise gross domestic product (GDP) growth by 1.52 percentage points. The Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed the four GST Bills —relating to the Centre, Union territories, intersale movement and compensation. Being money Bills, these do not require Rajya Sabha approval. The GST Council will now discuss rules on Friday andacommittee of officers will discuss specific rates next month. The GST is likely to be rolled out from July 1. Das said the GST Council would get into action mode now. He said that states might lose revenue in initial years, but he did not expect the losses to go beyond the first three years of the GST being rolled out. In any case, he said, there wasacompensation mechanism for the first five years. States will get full compensation to offset the losses. For this purpose,acess will be imposed o...

With goods and services tax (GST) rollout looking imminent from July 1 after the Lok Sabha´s approval, the Centre and states will on Friday sit together to finalise rules and regulations of the new indirect tax regime. The Lok Sabha on Wednesday cleared four supplementary GST legislations —Central GST (CGST), Integrated GST (IGST), Union Territory GST (UTGST) and the Compensation law. These laws would have supporting rules, which would be notified by the Centre and states before the new tax regime is implemented. The GST Council has already approved five sets of rules relating to registration, payments, refund, invoice and returns. However, these rules would still require some minor tweaking as the legislations were approved by the Council earlier this month and the five set of rules were framed before that. There are four more rules on composition, valuation, input tax credit and transitions, which will be discussed in Friday´s meeting of the Council. Before the formal...

  With all focus on the goods and services tax (GST) having now shifted to rules and specific rates, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia tells Dilasha Seth and Indivjal Dhasmana that multiple registration for companies will stay and that the GST Council may hold multiple meetings to take a call on fitment of rates. Edited excerpts:   While the government is saying the GST will be rolled out from July 1, the industry is demanding it be deferred to September 1, as it is not prepared. Is it possible to defer GST roll-out by two months?   That will be for the GST Council to decide. If the industry feels very strongly about it, let it write to us or to the states. We will take a view in the GST Council’s meeting. But as of now, we are ready for July 1. If the businesses have any difficulty with that (date), they should tell us. We will take it to the Council. The decision will be taken by the Council.   The GST Council will take up subordinate rules on Frida...

If there's rampant profiteering in certain sectors after GST, govt may seek explanations but only from oligopolies or in cases of imperfect competition After passage of the Goods and Services Tax bills in the Lok Sabha, industry has expressed apprehension over the clause on anti-profiteering. Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia allayed these fears in an interview to ET's Deepshikha Sikarwar, saying the government may not need to apply the clause at all. He said it is only an enabling provision that will likely be enforced only in the initial period of implementation. Edited excerpts: The GST Bills have received Lok Sabha's nod.What's the action plan going forward? First is massive industry outreach to ensure smooth implementation. The Centre and states will have to jointly carry out this outreach to every corner of the country so that no area is left uncovered. Second is training of officers.They have already undergone one-week training programme. Nearly 51,000...

New Development Bank (NDB) president K V Kamath is no stranger to India having built the country's largest private sector bank. He is more than familiar with the problem of bad debts, having grappled with it at the start of the millennium. Currently in India for the NDB board meeting, Kamath believes a structure needs to be put in place to enable lenders to pursue resolution of the bad loan problem without having to fear about vigilance agencies or the federal auditor, CAG, questioning business decisions. “We now need to get a resolution structure...somebody who can decide on what is doable and put a stamp on that...If that is done I think we will move ahead,“ he told TOI in an interview, adding that fo cus should be on getting the top cases where banks are stuck with bad loans. “If you address probably 100 cases in front of you, most of the problem can be addressed and these 100 cases would basically mean putting them back to productive use. The interesting part is the p...