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PAN-Aadhaar linkage does not help curb scams A lawyer today opposed the seeding of Aadhaar with the Permanent Account Number (PAN) for income tax in the Supreme Court, saying in no way does it help in preventing financial frauds or curb black money. Arguing before a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, which is hearing a clutch of petitions challenging Aadhaar and its enabling 2016 law, the lawyer referred to various recent financial frauds including the Nirav Modi scam and said none of these could have been avoided by using PAN-Aadhaar linkage. “Firstly, giant corporates, rather than individua l players, have been the main actors in these scams. Secondly, black money is widely known to be stored by the corrupt in foreign banks which are beyond the reach of Aadhaar,” lawyer Gopal Sankaranarayanan, representing NGO ‘Centre for Civil Society’, said The Business Standard, New Delhi, 27th April 2018

Revenue from online ads signals promising start to digital taxation The receipts peg the size of online advertisements worth above Rs1 lakh a year at Rs10,000 crore a year The first full year of taxing digital services has thrown up promising results with the government collecting Rs600 crore as tax from online advertisements. Policymakers are now busy planning to scale proceeds from this new area, including through tax treaty changes.The tax that took effect on 1 June, 2016 had brought in Rs500 crore in the 10 months of FY17. Online advertisements are the first digital service to come under ‘equalisation levy’, a tax deducted at source. The receipts peg the size of online advertisements worth above Rs1 lakh a year at Rs10,000 crore a year. The 6% tax is to be deducted at source on the payments made to the advertisement platform such as social networking and other sites as  well as search engines and paid to the government.The government is now planning industry-wide consul...

I-T department targets cash hoarders, seizes Rs15 crore in 2 days The tax department started its crackdown on cash hoarders  amid a cash crunch reported in several states earlier this month Continuing its drive against cash hoarders, the income tax (I-T) department has seized nearly Rs15 crore in the last two days across Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Punjab.The tax department started its crackdown on cash hoarders amid a cash crunch reported in several states earlier this month. The searches in Bengaluru targeted a few big contractors and led to the seizure of Rs6.76 crore in cash—in Rs2,000 and    Rs500 denominations—from benami lockers, said a tax department official. These contractors were awarded contracts between January and March this year, followed by bank transfers and then withdrawals. There were also no books of accounts maintained by the contractors, the official added. In Hyderabad, the searches were on t wo realtors and led to the seizure of Rs5.10 crore...

EPFO, ESIC, PFRDA Payroll Data an Eye Opener: Niti Niti Aayog said the payroll data released by three organisations on Wednesday are an eye opener and put an end to all speculations and conjectures regarding job creation in the economy as it  asked other organisations to release similar data.Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) and the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) for the first time released age-wise payroll data for six months to February. The EPFO data showed 3.1 million new additions  across all age groups while the PFRDA numbers showed 0.42 million new accounts under the New Pension System (NPS), taking the total to 3.52 million for the six months.“Hopefully this would also end the debate regarding and criticisms about jobless growth in the economy,” the Aayog said.The numbers for recent months are provisional and the finally tally could well be higher. This data would be released ev...