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To make it easier to do business, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said on Monday it  has introduced an online registration system for REITs and InvITs. The new system would help REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) and InvITs to complete registration and  other regulatory filings with Sebi much faster and inacosteffective manner. The Business Standard, New Delhi, 25th July 2017

A Bill amending the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 has been tabled in the Parliament today. Once enacted into law, the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill 2017 is  expected to replace the ordinance issued by the centre in May 2018. The following are the highlights of the Bill. The following are the highlights of the Bill. The ordinance inserts provisions for recovery of outstanding loans as per which, the central government may authorise the  Reserve Bank of India to direct banks to initiate recovery proceedings against loan defaulters. These recovery proceedings will be under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy  Code, 2016.  The Code provides for a time-bound process to resolve defaults by either (i) restructuring a loan (such as changing the repayment schedule), or (ii)  liquidating the defaulter’s assets. The RBI may from time to time issue directions to banks for resolving stressed assets.  Stressed assets are loans where the borrower has defaulted on r...

A proposal to refund central goods and services tax (GST) on items made in formerly excise-free zones in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and the North-East is set to be  presented to cabinet. The move will benefit companies such as Cipla, Dabur, Dr Reddy’s and TVS Motor that invested in those areas because of the tax break. Such  exemptions have largely been scrapped under GST as part of efforts to create a common market across India with as few interstate variations as possible. The  Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) has approved the scheme, which is likely to benefit a number of automobile, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and pharmaceutical  companies that have invested in these zones. “EFC has cleared the scheme,” a senior finance ministry official told ET. It will shortly be introduced in the cabinet, he said. Hundreds of pharmaceutical companies  including high-profile ones such as Cipla, Dabur, Dr Reddy’s, Johnson & Johnson and Wockhardt have p...

The GST Network (GSTN), the entity responsible for the information technology backbone of the goods and services tax (GST), opened its system on Monday for invoice  uploading. It is not mandatory to start the uploading but “it´s live”, said Prakash Kumar, chief executive officer (CEO) of GSTN. This was earlier permitted but only foraselect few such as Suvidha providers, tax consultants and some officials. Kumar said invoices could be uploaded through Suvidha providers or by assessees themselves. For this purpose, GSTN had launched an Excel template on June 30, beside offline tools. Archit Gupta, CEO of ClearTax, one of the Suvidha providers, said taxpayers might find it difficult to locate the page where invoices have to be uploaded. “We also observed that only JSON files are supported. Businesses maintaining Excel sheets for invoices need to convert these to JSON format,” he said. Praveen Khandelwal, secretary general of the Confederation of All India Traders (...

The income taxpayer base moved up substantially to 62.6 million at the end of the last financial year, from nearly 40 million earlier, the Central Board of Direct  Taxes (CBDT) Chairman Sushil Chandra said on Monday. Clearing the air on disclosure of bank account details of nonresident Indians (NRIs), expats, as well as foreigners with investments in private equity in India,  Chandra also said such accounts need to be disclosed only whenarefund is due to the assessee. The chairman of the CBDT said after demonetisation the department has takenahost of measures to increase tax base and the statement of financial transaction (SFT)  report filed by banks shows widening of taxpayer base. “As on date, we have got 62.6 million assessees. These assessees who have filed returns, paid advance tax or tax has been deducted at source. This is a large jump from earlier years,” he said, speaking at the Income Tax Day celebrations here. The challenge before the taxmen now r...

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has notified stricter participatory notes (P-notes)  norms stipulating a fee of $ 1,000 that will belevie done each instrument to check any misuse for  channelising black money. The new measures, which follow as lew of other steps taken by Sebi in the recent past, come at a time  when the value of foreign investments through P- notes or off shore derivative instruments (ODIs) has  surged to a seven month high of about Rs 1.81 lakh crore at May end. While such investments used to  account for more than half of the overall oreign portfolio investments at one point, their share has  now fallen to just a little over 6 percent. Still, concerns remain that P-notes are misused by some to channelise black money from abroad in to the  country through the stock markets. The Business Standard, New Delhi, 25th July 2017

The non-resident Indians will not have to give details of their bank accounts held outside the country  while filing their income tax returns, if they are not seeking refunds, the CBDT said today. "It (providing details of foreign bank accounts) is not mandatory. It is optional. It is for cases  where refund is sought," CBDT Chairman Sushil Chandra told reporters on the sidelines of an event to  celebrate the 157th Income Tax day here. The department's top boss said this when asked to clarify if it was mandatory for Non-Resident Indians  (NRIs) to provide the details of their foreign bank accounts in certain return forms like the ITR-2. That column in the income tax returns (ITRs), Chandra said, is to be filed in "only one condition, that  is, if they (NRIs) are seeking a refund." The Central Board of Direct Taxes (policy-making body for the I-T Department) had brought out new ITRs  on March 31 this year and a newly introduced column in the ITR-...

Stating that linking of Aadhaar with PAN was an effective anti-evasion measure, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Monday that "non-compliance" were being defended  in "the name of privacy". Addressing tax officials to mark the Income Tax Day, the FM said a series of steps taken by the government were intended to expand the tax base, make processes more  reasonable, make rates more reasonable, and enrich and empower the country. "You take some effective anti-evasion measures like linking of PAN with Aadhaar to avoid multiple PAN cards or to keep a watch on the nature of expenditure that the  expenditure is compliant with the declared income of an assessee, you will find noncompliances being defended these days in the name of privacy," Jaitley said. "Now this is where we have to get out of, and the debate in favour of compliances has to be a debate based on creating a more ethical and a more complaint India." FM  said net impact of de...