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Trading in bitcoins under taxmen, Enforcement Directorate lens Investments in cryptocurrency have come under the radar of tax authorities and investigation agencies amid concerns that they could have become conduits for illicit flows and the movement of black money. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money appointed by the Supreme Court has expressed worries about cryptocurrency and suggested curbs on their trading in its draft report. “There are concerns on the way it operates.Some unaccounted money could be flowing into these,” said an official aware of the matter. The team is likely to submit its final report in a month, the person said. Policy makers are looking at the issue closely and are expected to take a call shortly, another government official said. Income-tax authorities and the Enforcement Directorate are also examining investments in cryptocurrency after the Indian government demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in November last year. “There are is...

5,000 companies face queries on GST transition credit  Tax officials have asked about 5,000 companies, including some big manufacturers that figure in the BSE 500 list, to provide explanation on transition credit they claimed in July under goods and services tax (GST), two people familiar with the development said. The move is part of an investigation the indirect tax department has launched after the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) in a letter dated September 11 asked chief indirect tax commissioners to verify all transitional credit claims beyond Rs 1crore.  Thousands of companies across the country received calls from indirect tax officials last week, the sources told ET. “Tax officers want chief finance officer (CFO) or some senior finance department executive to come to the department and explain how we arrived at the input tax credit we claimed,” said a senior executive at a Haryana-based manufacturer of automobile components. The executive said the offi...

Sebi diktat may change essence of balanced funds The Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (Sebi’s) proposed move to simplify category classifications of mutual fund schemes may lead to a change in the definition of balanced funds. The capital markets regulator has been going slow on approving balanced funds in the past few years and unofficially insisting on a 50:50 equity-to-debt mix for new scheme approvals. Currently, there is no standard definition of balanced funds. Several fund houses already offer balanced schemes that have an equity allocation of 65 per cent or higher. This allows them to be classified as equity schemes, which enjoy a tax advantage over debt funds as capital gains become tax free after a year. Since most diversified equity funds offer a 70-100 per cent equity exposure, the regulator believes a balanced fund offering 65-75 per cent does not offer much differentiation, according to sector officials. Fund houses, on the other hand, have been reluctant ...

RBI seeks to regulate peer-to-peer lending The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday came up with a discussion paper on peer-topeer lending (P2P), seeking to regulate the fast emerging crowd funding platforms as the new financing model has assumed importance too significant to be ignored. Interestingly, the platform owners and investors welcomed the development as regulation gives RBI’s stamp of approval to a business that is completely banned in countries like Japan and Israel. “Any space where money changes hand should be regulated. Regulation is good for the industry, but it should be light regulation” said Mohandas Pai, former board member of Infosys and investor in Faircent.com, a P2P lending platform. “Regulation will help us in our business and we can approach the court of law as legal entities for our needs and even for recovery,” said Bhavin Patel, co-founder of LenDen Club, a P2P platform. In fact, RBI itself is aware of this and sounded a little hesitant in giving this...

2.2 million GST returns filed till 6 pm, deadline ends midnight Nearly 2.2 million goods and services tax (GST) returns have been filed so far for August as businesses flocked the GSTN portal to submit their returns on Wednesday —the last day for tax filing. Over 2.2 million returns were filed till 6 pm,a source said. Return filing would continue till midnight. This is the second month of return filing under the GST regime. Similar to last month, businesses thronged the GST Network portal on the last day to pay taxes. Nearly 4.5 million businesses had filed returns in July, fetching a revenue of Rs 95,000 crore to the exchequer. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had earlier in the day said that GSTN has the capacity to handle 100,000 returns per hour, which translates to 2.4 million returns in a day. But if majority of the taxpayers decide to pay taxes on the last day, then the system would have some trouble. “Therefore I would appeal to everybody, it is in their interest (to file retu...

Debarred firm directors may approach courts The government´s move to debar directors of companies that have not filled annual returns for three successive years is likely to be challenged in courts citing retrospective application of the Companies Act, 2013. Asageneral rule, the law is always applicable prospectively unless any prior date is mentioned specifically, says Sumit Naib, associate director, Companies Act, 2013, that pertains to disqualification of directors due to nonfiling of financials and annual returns for three years, is applicable to all types of companies, including private ones, with effect from April 1, 2014. Prior to enactment of this new section under Companies Act, 2013, the corresponding section under the Companies Act, 1956, was applicable only to public companies. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs earlier this month struck off the names of around from the records, found to be without any business activity or had not filed financial statements for three yea...

Banks can Classify Priority Loans as Standard Debt: RBI The Reserve Bank of India has assured banks that they can classify priority loans extended to defaulting companies in the bankruptcy process as standard debt in a move aimed at ensuring that entities which can be revived are able to raise resources, said people with knowledge of the matter. This will come as a relief to those companies that are struggling to recast loans within the strict deadline imposed by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. The central bank has however said this classification will be allowed only if repayments are made every month rather than later in the form of bullet payments or after a few months. RBI did not re spond to ET's queries. The banks had sought a clarification on the difference in treatment of such loans by banks and finance companies. Priority loans take precedence over other forms of debt and are repaid before other loans in the event of liquidation. Finance companies without any exist...

Businesses Stay Optimistic Amid GSTN's Tech Hiccups ET speaks to stakeholders as portal tries to smoothen glitches related to filing of returns System seems to have encountered an error while processing your return...Please try after some time. GSTN portal is experiencing an abrupt surge in traffic, hence we're unable to service your request...' These are some of the responses from the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) portal when businesses attempted to file returns or upload invoices for July. Filing returns has emerged as a sore point after GST rollout on July 1, pushing the portal's functioning to the centrestage at the last GST Council meeting on September 9. A group of ministers headed by Bihar finance minister Sushil Kumar Modi has already directed Infosys -the backend service provider -to fix the system. Why did GSTN crash on September 4 and September 9? The portal is designed handle uploads of up to 50,000 invoices per second. Was it server capacity o...

Advance tax signals muted growth Cumulatively, tax collection from Mumbai zone grows just 11% Top 100 firms from Mumbai show moderate rise in tax outgo at 8 per cent signalling slow growth IN LINE with macro environment, the advance tax collections from the top100 corporates from the financial capital showed a muted growth for the September quarter, with the outgoes increasing by only up to 8 per cent, a senior official said on Monday. “For the top-100 companies, the advance tax payments have increased by 7-8 per cent,” the official said. Cumulatively for the first two quarters till now, the advance tax collections from the Mumbai zone, which contributes over a third of the income tax collections nationally, have grown 11 per cent, the official said. Leading the pack in the financial capital was Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries (RIL), which paid Rs 1,670 crore as against the Rs 1,534 crore in the same period year ago, the official said. Insurance giant Life Insurance Corporati...

Tweak GST rules or exports will suffer: Industry tells Adhia Trade & industry bodies have warned that slowdown in orders, liquidity crisis may lead to Rs 65,00 cr of exports getting stuck A severe slowdown in foreign orders, combined with a growing liquidity crisis, may get out of hand by the year-end if rules of export under the goods and services tax (GST) regime are not altered soon, industry bodies have warned. At a meeting with Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia-led GST committee - set up to look into exporter concerns on Tuesday - trade and industry bodies pointed out that the deferment in mandatory filing of GST return forms as well as extreme difficulty in receiving tax returns was hurting exports, sources present said. This may lead to a Rs 65,000-crore worth of exports being stuck by the end of the year, director-general of the Federation of Indian Exports Organisations (FIEO), Ajay Sahai said. Two months after the roll-out of the GST regime in July, the order books of...

Govt identifies over 1 lakh directors of shell companies for disqualification More than 1,00,000 directors in firms identified as defaulters stare at disqualification as the government continues its crackdown against shell companies. The move follows the cancellation of registration of around 210,000 companies and restrictions on the operation of bank accounts by their directors. The government is now investigating these companies for money laundering activities while also drawing up detailed profiles of their directors in collaboration with the enforcement agencies, an official statement said on Tuesday. "We are identifying the defaulting directors of these shell companies," the statement quoted minister of state for corporate affairs PP Chaudhary as saying. "This whole exercise shall go a long way in creating an atmosphere of confidence and faith in the system, paving the way for ease of doing business in India." Under Section 164 of the Companies Act, 2013, a...