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The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is taking a stern view of any adulteration or lapse in hygiene in the food business.At a summit on Monday , its chief executive, Pawan Kumar Agarwal, said, “We will amend regulations to make it mandatory for food business operators to have at least one person trained in food safety.“ FSSAI also launched a food safety training and certification programme (FoSTaC), which has 19 short courses -from basic to advanced and specialised courses for street food vendors, restaurants chefs, caterers, food business operators as well as the general public. The regulator unveiled a food smart consumer portal for registering grievances in order to strengthen its redressal system, along with releasing a guidance document for food handlers and regulatory staff. FSSAI has created safe and nutritious food mascots -Master and Miss Sehat --superheroes who spread awareness among children. FSSAI will soon come out with new regulations relating to...

Goods of common use may be spared in the final list being prepared by Centre and states The Centre and states are expected to keep the exemption list short -about 100 -under the proposed goods and services tax regime, even as the North Block is flooded with requests from industry associations to keep their products out of tax net or in the lowest slab. The Centre currently exempts 299 items while states keep 99 out of the tax net. “Some items will remain exempted,“ said a top government official. Goods of common use and consumed largely by the masses will be spared in the final list.Salt, primary produce, fruits and vegetables, flour, salt, milk, eggs, tea, coffee and prasad sold at temples could figure on the exemption list. “It's near finalisation...Ultimately, it will be a political call,“ said a government official. Services above certain threshold, exempted under differential taxation, may be brought into the tax net to broaden the base. For instance, budget hotels with ta...

The Centre has given one final opportunity to all non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which had applied for renewal of their registration under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010 (FCRA) but had not uploaded their annual returns from financial year 2010-11 to 2014-15, to do so. “All such NGOs can upload their missing Annual Returns along with the requisite documents within a period of 30 days, starting from May 15, 2017 to June 14, 2017. Further no compounding fee will be imposed on them for late filing of Annual Returns during this period,” the home ministry said in a statement. The ministry also added that the registration under FCRA would not be renewed unless the annual returns were uploaded by the NGOs. Mint New Delhi, 17th May 2017

May put threshold for shareholders owning up to 2% in stock exchanges The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is likely to remove the ‘fit and proper’ requirement for shareholders owning up to two per cent in stock exchanges,said a source privy to the development. The current rules don’t allow an entity to directly or indirectly own shares in an exchange, unless declared ‘fit and proper’. Sebi has listed different scenarios for monitoring and complying with the norm, based on shareholding thresholds of two per cent, five per cent and 15 per cent. Now, if an entity wanted to acquire shares of up to two per cent, the stock exchange had to grant approval; the exchange was also required to monitor their fit criteria based on declarations made by the acquirer. The market regulator would soon bring an amendment in the stock exchanges and clearing corporations rules, currently under review for exchanges and other market infrastructure institutions. In a representation to the Seb...

Retirement fund manager EPFO has reduced the stipulated period for settlement of various claims such PF withdrawal, pension and insurance to 10 days from 20 at present. In July 2015, the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) had reduced the timeline for settling various claims to 20 day to improve the service delivery for its over four crore subscribers. The body has launched the online claim settlement facility on May 1, 2017. It has planned to eventually settle claims of all Aadhaar and bank account seeded EPF accounts within three hours of receipt of an application. "The timeline in case of claim settlements is 10 days and 15 days in case of grievance redressal management," an EPFO statement said. These are new provisions in the EPFO's Citizens' Charter 2017 launched in Bangalore on Tuesday by Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya. It said the Charter is an attempt to bring transparency and accountability on the part of EPFO and make service delivery s...

The government´s to demonetise Rs 500  Rs 1,000 notes has the authorities bring 9.1 people under the tax money has lost its anonymity, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said Tuesday.This is roughly one fourth of 37 million individuals who filed tax returns in 2015-16. Launching a new website on ´Operation Clean Money´,a programme to bring illegal wealth on the books, Jaitley said demonetisation givenapush towards and led to an increase in the number of assessees and tax revenues.November 8 announcement had also instilled fear people about dealing he said. “One message has gone out clearly as per the steps taken by the CBDT post demonetisation —it is no longer safe to deal with excessive cash and tax evaded money ... It is absolutely clear that those who have been indulging in all these are no longer safe,” Jaitley said. Post demonetisation, there had been a hike in collection of personal income tax, the finance minister said, adding that the new portal would help honest tax p...

The Centre and states to charge only 0.5% each; e-commerce marketplaces to collect levy The Centre and states are likely to each impose a 0.5 per cent tax collected at source on sellers of products on ecommerce websites such as Flipkart and Amazon under the goods and services tax (GST) regime. This proposal would be taken up at the two-day meeting of the GST Council, starting Thursday in Srinagar. The tax will be collected by the e-commerce market places: They will deduct 1 per cent while paying the sellers. E-commerce players had earlier opposed a provision in the GST law to impose a 2 per cent tax — 1 per cent by the Centre and states each — deducted at source. The new indirect tax regime is expected to be rolled out on July 1. “The tax collected at source will only help trace who is doing the transaction through an e-commerce portal. It is a measure to make such portals accountable,” said a senior government official, adding the tax could also be zero but states were not in favo...