CA Online

STILL ATTRACTIVE PPF rate may see a marginal cut of 20-25 bps; but it will continue to be one of the best debt instruments for investors, say experts Investors in the Public Provident Fund (PPF) and other small savings schemes should get ready for another rate cut. If the government follows the Gopinath Panel formula that links small savings in-terest rates with government bond yields, the PPF rate could be cut by almost 100 basis points to 7%. According to the Gopinath Panel formula, the interest rates of small savings schemes are slightly higher than the average yield of government bonds of the same maturity in the preceding three months. In case of the PPF , the rate is 25 basis point above the average 10-year government bond yield.The 10-year yield has dropped to 6.5% and has stayed decidedly below the 7% mark throughout the past three months. If the government follows the formula, the PPF rate could fall to almost 7% in the January-March quarter. Analysts feel the government...

Barring some clauses, centre and states have agreed upon most of proposed Central GST law The Goods and Services Tax Council on Thursday cleared a substantial part of the central legislation for the proposed tax regime, marking a significant progress towards this reform. The thornier issue of division of tax administration between the centre and states that can possibly delay the implementation of the new tax regime will be taken up on Friday. “A substantial part of the C-GST law barring four to five clauses where we need some more deliberations have been cleared...The council has reached broad consensus on the law,“ a government official said after the first day of the GST Council meeting, not wanting to be named. The C-GST law refers to the central GST law, which will be complemented by state GST laws and an integrated GST law that deals with inter-state delivery of goods and services. The government is keen to roll out the new regime from April 1, 2017, but now the deadl...

In future, you may have to prove you have sufficient parking space before being aallowed to buy a car. Urban development minister M. Venkaiah Naidu told reporters on Thursday that it would be made compulsory for car owners to provide an adequate parking space certificate. “No car or vehicle will be registered without an adequate parking space available certificate. I am very keen on this. I am holding discussions with the surface transport minister and also sensitizing the states. We would be moving in that direction,” Naidu. “In future, it will be mandated. No permission will be given to any construction without a toilet,” Naidu said at the launch of a toilet locator mobile app. Officials in the ministry said to enforce such a decision nationally, amendments will have to be made to the Motor Vehicles Act. Separately, the government in August had introduced the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill, 2016 in the Lok Sabha. The amendments, aimed to increase road safety and compensation, ...

The Union ministry of consumer affairs, in association with the Bengaluru’s National Law School of India University (NLSIU), will soon inaugurate  Online Consumer Mediation Centre (OCMC). The Centre, which perhaps is the first of kind of such initiative, will initially deal with only cases related to e-commerce companies and will facilitate online and even physical mediation between consumers and companies. The basic purpose of the Centre to encourage consumers and companies to go for pre-litigation and provide them with an option to settle disputes amicably. Officials said the Centre which had been set-up in NLSIU will have eminent lawyers and judges in its panel of mediators. Customers who have duped by e-commerce companies can avail this facility by just filling in an online form and paying the requisite fees. After this, the customers have to provide supporting documents like invoice etc and also explain the type of help that he wants from the Centre. The Centre pro...

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, comprising the Union finance minister and state representatives, mainly their finance ministers, cleared most of the draft model GST Bill on Thursday. This leaves mainly the contentious issue of administrative turf between the Centre and states for Friday. Some state finance ministers did not rule out the Centre resorting to voting for resolving the issue of control over assessees under the proposed regime. Beside administrative turf, the Friday meeting will take up the Integrated GST (IGST) and compensation Bills. Agreement over these would be crucial for introducing these in the coming session of Parliament. "The basic model GST Bill has been concluded. Things we have kept aside, such as the issue of cross-empowerment and IGST, will come for discussion tomorrow," Jammu and Kashmir finance minister Haseeb Drabu told reporters after the meeting. He said it was decided earlier as well to go through the entire draft model law fi...

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, comprising the Union finance minister and state representatives, mainly their finance ministers, cleared most of the draft model GST Bill on Thursday. This leaves mainly the contentious issue of administrative turf between the Centre and states for Friday. Some state finance ministers did not rule out the Centre resorting to voting for resolving the issue of control over assessees under the proposed regime. Beside administrative turf, the Friday meeting will take up the Integrated GST (IGST) and compensation Bills. Agreement over these would be crucial for introducing these in the coming session of Parliament. "The basic model GST Bill has been concluded. Things we have kept aside, such as the issue of cross-empowerment and IGST, will come for discussion tomorrow," Jammu and Kashmir finance minister Haseeb Drabu told reporters after the meeting. He said it was decided earlier as well to go through the entire draft model law fi...

The Union cabinet on Wednesday approved a draft ordinance to additionally empower states and allow industries to pay wages digitally, through direct bank transfers or by cheque. At present, the 80-year-old law only permits cash payments. “The government proposes to bring an amendment to Section 6 of the Payment of Wages Act, which will further provide crediting the wages in the bank account of the employees or payment through cheque along with the existing provisions of payment in current coin or currency notes,” a cabinet statement read. A government official said on condition of anonymity that the cabinet has forwarded the draft ordinance to President Pranab Mukherjee for his assent. The draft ordinance proposes changes to Section 6 of the Payment of Wages Act of 1936. The section sought to be amended says that “all payment of wages should be made in cash, with a provision enabling employers to obtain written permission of the worker to pay either by cheque, or by crediting the wage...

Mumbai: Amid rising decibels of the demonetisation debate banks are silently preparing for an upcoming event: Ind AS 109 or Indian Accounting Standard, a global accounting practice that lenders are mandated to adopt that may lead to initial credit losses. Banks including private sector ones like ICICI, HDFC and Axis are actively working on this as they have submitted estimates for such losses to Reserve Bank of India, which is now expected to come out with fresh guidelines on computation of expected credit losses (ECL), a key to banks’ future earnings, three sources familiar with the matter told ET. “The provisioning requirements under IFRS 9 (International Financial Reporting Standard) may be higher than what you are seeing today because we derive numbers on incurred losses rather than expected losses,” said Jairam Sridharan, CFO, Axis Bank. “There will be an incremental provisioning requirement which will result in higher capital necessity or banks capital ratios will go down becaus...

NEW DELHI: Niti Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya called for a simpler tax regime, elimination of exemptions and precise taxation rules to minimise discretion to prevent the accumulation of black money and build on the benefits that will accrue from demonetisation. “To discourage the creation of black money and curb corruption, we will also need to tackle election funding,” Panagariya told ET in an interview, backing the Election Commission’s call for a cap on anonymous donations at Rs 2,000.  “There is also a proposal for state funding of elections, which may be considered.” Tax reforms will also help lower rates, encouraging savings and boosting revenue through greater compliance. He said demonetisation is likely to bring significant gains in tax revenue, which may allow the government to raise expenditure without violating any of its fiscal goals. Panagariya said without data it may be difficult to estimate impact of demonetisation on the economy in current year but “we wil...

RBI withdrew rules that required bank customers to make deposits of above Rs 5,000 in old notes Facing intense criticism, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday withdrew rules that required bank customers to make deposits of above Rs 5,000 in old currency notes at one go and only after satisfying officials with reasons for not doing so earlier. In the modified circular on its website on Wednesday afternoon, the central bank said two sub-paragraphs of the original circular “will not apply to fully KYC compliant accounts.” This means there would be no restriction on cash deposits — neither on the amount, nor on the number of times money could be deposited. The latest notification is the 60th from the North Block-Mint Road combine in the past 43 days. The central bank faced a barrage of criticism on social media throughout the day, while many said they had trusted the prime minister and the finance minister, who had advised them to not extend queues outside banks and ATMs, as they ...

The Goods & Services Tax (GST) Council will meet on Thursday and Friday to take up drafts of the model GST, integrated GST and states' compensation Bills.   The aim will be to address the contentious issue of administrative turf  between Centre and  states.  Tax experts say this will be difficult. The Centre might push a cross-empowerment model of random choosing and division of five% of the assessees between Centre and the states, using a computer programme. The parameters on which the assessees could be chosen would be in-built in software written for this purpose.   However, states want sole control over assessees up to Rs 1.5 crore of annual turnover.   Naveen Wadhwa of Taxmann thinks a solution could be found outside the suggested models. He says states could have sole control over assessees up to Rs 1.5 crore of turnover if their supplies are intra-state; above that, the Centre should. If supplies are inter-state, the Centre should have control o...