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New ITR forms notified; salary breakup, GST ID to be furnished The new Income Tax Return (ITR) forms for the assessment year 2018-19 were notified today by the Central Board of Direct Taxes that mandated salaried class assessees to provide their  salary breakup and businessmen their GST number and turnover.The policy-making body of the tax department said some fields have been "rationalised" in the latest forms and that there is no change in the manner of filing the ITRs as compared to last year. All the seven ITRs are to be filed electronically except for some category of taxpayers, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said in a statement.The most basic -- ITR-1 or Sahaj -- is to be filled by the salaried class of taxpayers, which was used by 3 crore taxpayers during the last financial year.The form this time seeks an assessees salary details in separate fields and in a breakup format such as allowances that are not exempt, value of perquisites, profit in lieu of s...

Start-up investors may be exempt from 'angel tax' But, majority might be left out, as only those investing in entities recognised by govt could qualify The central go vernment might exempt investments by individuals in certain start-ups from the so-called ‘angel tax’.“We are discussing retrospective exemption of Section 56 of the Income Tax Act for angel tax investments in start-ups,” said a senior official from the department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP). The department oversees the regulatory framework for start-ups. The said tax, under Section 56(2)(viib) of the I-T Act, is a levy of 30 per cent on the amount exceeding the fair market value of shares issued by unlisted companies, treated as income from other sources.Concerns have been expressed over the possibility of investments into the start-up system being discouraged by this tax and also of harassment by I-T officials. Exemption from this tax is now being considered but might only be given up to a...

Government set up e-commerce think tank to encourage local players The government has set up a think tank to look into ways to encourage home-grown ecommerce players and develop a domestic policy to respond to doubts raised by other countries on India’s stance on cross-border digital trade, a senior official said. “The think tank has been set up with the purpose to see what should be done domestically to take advantage of the existing situation in India’s ecommerce sector and what can be done in future,” the official told ET.Led by commerce and industry minister Suresh Prabhu, the think tank includes officials from ministries of finance, home affairs, corporate affairs, and electronics and information technology, among others, besides representatives from telecom, IT and ecommerce firms including Bharti Enterprises, Reliance Jio, TCS, WiproNSE -0.58 %, Ola, Snapdeal, Makemytrip, Urban Clap, Justdial, PepperFry and Practo. The group also has representation from Technology, Inform...

Income tax department forms committee to look into tax risk of super-rich leaving India The income tax department has set up a committee to look into the tax implications of the super-rich leaving  the country to settle abroad and also arrive at the country’s stand on such migrations. ET had reported last month that 23,000 dollar-millionaires have left India since 2004, the highest in percentage terms among all countries. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has set up a five-member working group led by a joint secretary-rank official and four revenue officers to look into the taxation aspects of such high-net worth individuals (HNIs), sources told ET. Setting up the group, CBDT not ed that in recent times, there has been a trend of high net worth individuals migrating from their country of residence to other jurisdictions. It noted such a migration is a “substantial tax risk since they may treat themselves as non-residents for taxation purposes in the first jurisdictio...

RBI defers implementation of Ind AS by one year The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday decided to defer implementation of Indian Accounti ng Standard (Ind AS) by one year for the banks.Scheduled commercial banks (SCBs), excluding regional rural banks (RRBs), were required to implement Ind AS from April 1, 2018. Necessary legislative amendments – to make the format of financial statements, prescribed in t he Third Schedule to Banking Regulation Act 1949, compatible with accounts under Ind AS – are still under consideration of the government," the apex bank said in a statement.In view of this, as also the level of preparedness of many banks, it has been decided to defe r implementation of Ind AS by one year by when the necessary legislative changes are expected, it said. By that time, the necessary legislative changes are expected, it said. In a note in January, India Ratings estimates had pointed out that SCBs may need up to Rs 89,000 crore towards incremental provisio...