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The Commodity Derivatives Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchange Board of India ( Sebi) will meet on Friday with senior officials of the latter, to give a final shape to the rules on options trading in commodity futures, beside revising the warehousing norms to ensure good delivery on settlement. The decision taken, after discussing with the advisory committee, will be placed before the regulator’s board, to finalise the regulations. According to knowledgeable sources, three commodities in each segment, agricultural and non- agricultural, have been proposed for introducing options. It appears commodities from the soya and guar segments are preferred in the former. From the non- agri segment, it is likely that gold, silver and crude oil will be finalised. All these These have better liquidity and both the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange and the Multi Commodity Exchange, respectively, will be able to introduce the options. In the equity segments, options ar...

Even as the Union government strives to build consensus over the constitution amendment Bill for a goods and services tax (GST), a turf war between indirect tax departments of the Centre and states over the assessment and adjudication powers under the proposed regime continues. The GST committee, set up by the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), has proposed two options in its report to iron out the administrative differences under the unified indirect tax regime. Although Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will take a final call on the matter, the issue is likely to be discussed on Tuesday at the meeting of state finance ministers’ empowered committee on GST. States are demanding that they should get sole administrative powers to carry out assessment, scrutiny and passing of orders for entities and traders up to an annual turnover of Rs 1.5 crore and beyond that both states and the Centre should have these powers. The CBEC committee, headed by its member Ram Tirath, has rec...

Armed with information on about nine million high value transactions without permanent account numbers (PANs) over a span of eight years, the income- tax department plans to initially issue 700,000 letters to individuals in this regard, asking them to disclose all about their spending. “The department has these details for the period 2009- 10 to 2016- 17,” the finance ministry stated on Thursday. The department has scrutinised the annual information returns for high value transactions — cash deposits of over Rs. 10 lakh in a savings bank account, sale/ purchase of immovable property valued at Rs. 30 lakh or more, etc — and many of these did not have a linked PAN. These returns are information received from third- party sources like banks, mutual funds and registrars about such high- value transactions. The department had, with the help of inhouse computer techniques, grouped such non- PAN transactions and identified 700,000 ‘high- risk clusters’, having around 1.4 million non- PA...

There are growing concerns that over 5 million mutual fund folios are likely to be closed or the account frozen due to non-compliance with the US’ Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act or FATCA. According to the Association of Mutual Fund of India (Amfi), mutual fund investments of about Rs.1 lakh crore could be affected prompting the association to approach the finance ministry to address the issue. “The matter should get resolved… We have already approached the finance ministry for a solution,” said A Balasubra-manian, vice-chairman of Amfi. The deadline for furnishing details under FATCA is August 31, and still a large number of mutual fund investors haven’t yet complied with it. According to industry estimates, around 5.2-5.4 million folios may be affected. “It is unlikely that there will be any freezing of accounts, but at the same time there should compliance, so the government should look at giving an extension as freezing of accounts could lead to collapse of the system,...

As per Finance Bill of 2016, Equalization levy is applicable for certain specified services related to digital domain wherein the amount of consideration exceeds a specified value (threshold prescribed by Income Tax Department).

The government has written to states, asking them to reduce stamp duty on registration of houses for poor, in a bid to push affordable housing projects across the country. “I have just written to all the chief ministers with regard to the need to reduce stamp duty. The stamp duty was collected to maintain the registers, now it has become a source of revenue. Charging this on affordable housing people will be a burden,” urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu said. Hindustan Times New Delhi,21th July 2016

Markets regulator Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India) on Wednesday said the electronic book ( ebook) mechanism will be mandatory for companies raising debt via private placements, aggregating to Rs.500 crore or more in a single financial year. The move will help streamline procedures for issuance of debt securities on private placement basis, boosting efficiency, transparency of the price discovery mechanism, and improving liquidity in the secondary market. The e- book mechanism is mandatory for all private placement issues on debt basis for more than Rs. 500 crore from July 1. "Further, in case, the issuer comes with multiple issues in afinancial year which are individually less than Rs.500 crore, but the aggregate issue size in the same year crosses Rs.500 crore, in such a scenario, issuer shall use the e- book mechanism for any incremental private placement," Sebi said. The regulator said the mechanism is voluntary for those issues of debt securities whic...

Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal expressed hope that the Rajya Sabha would clear the Constitutional amendment for a proposed national goods and services tax (GST), with support from regional parties.  On the sidelines of an Assocham event, he said the Congress party's demand for capping the GST rate in the Constitution was "not practical" and the government was trying for a consensus. “There are many chief ministers — of UP, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar — who all want GST to come fast...We hope the Rajya Sabha will be able to pass the Bill in the third week of the session," he said. The current session of Parliament began on Monday and ends on August 12. The Congress, which originally mooted GST in the Budget for 2006-07, to replace all indirect taxes, has been demanding the overall rate be capped at 18 per cent and an additional one per cent tax designed to compensate manufacturing states that fear loss of revenue be scrapped. Recently, it indicat...

The Centre has decided not to raise the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit on newspapers and periodicals to 49 per cent from 26 per cent. Currently, the FDI policy permits 26 per cent FDI in the publishing of newspapers and periodicals dealing with news and current affairs via the approval route. The issue of relaxing FDI norms in the print media has been pending for long. The Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) had recently asked the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion ( DIPP) to have a look at the proposal. In a communication to DEA, the DIPP said a “considered view” was taken against increasing the FDI cap in print media sector, sources said. The issue of relaxing the FDI cap in print media came up for discussions last November as well as during the recent liberalisation of the norms in June and both times it was decided not to tweak the caps, they added. Recently, the government relaxed FDI norms in about eight sectors, including civil aviation, defence, priva...

BACK TO SQUARE ONE A fortnight ago, CBDT had eased the norm for MNCs to have mandatory PAN no. for availing sops under tax treaties but it's still a must for filing returns Two weeks after the Central Board of Direct Taxes relaxed the norm of having mandatory PAN cards so that they can pay lowest domestic tax rates, many have now started to receive notices from the income tax for filing tax returns. It is a Catch-22 situation for the companies; to file returns they need to submit a PAN number, so the relaxation means zilch. While the total number of notices could not be ascertained, a person close to the development said the government is likely to send out 100 notices including those that have already been dispatched. Any multinational not filing for tax returns under any pretext would have to face further penalties from the Income Tax department. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), about a fortnight back, had given relaxation to multinationals (non-resident companie...

www.caonline.in News... 1. The recommendation of the Supreme Court-constituted special investigation team (SIT) to ban cash transactions above Rs.3 lakh and capping cash holdings of companies and individuals at Rs.15 lakh will be detrimental for India’s traditional economy, according to a leading traders body. 2. Private school audit can be done by CA and the report will be submitted to the Delhi Government in the second week of August. This proposal and verification is based on the direction of the Delhi high court. 3. Use latest version of e-Forms INC-23, MR-1 and MR-2, which are likely to be revised on MCA Portal by 21.07.2016. 4. MCA issues The Companies (Share Capital and Debentures) Third Amendment Rules, 2016. MCA notification dated 19th July, 2016. 5. Today (21.07.16) is last date for e-payment of DVAT & CST pertaining to month/quarter ending in June 2016.