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UNDER SCRUTINY: Rs 56,000 crore worth of trades monthly from 2009 to 2011  The case of client code changes in the stock market is set to haunt stock brokers again. The income tax (I-T) department is preparing to send notices to more brokers for the assessment year 2010-2011and 2011-12 when the practice of changing client codes within 30 minutes after market close to rectify punching errors was common. The tax department felt brokers resorted to this practice to avoid paying taxes as client code modifications constituted ` . 56,000 crore worth of trades every month between 2009 and 2011. Gains and losses were transferred from one account to another under the guise of rectifying errors. In the past, tax notices have been served on over 100 brokers at the start of 2016 for assessment year 2009-2010 but the same were pending for the following two assessment years, said a senior IT official in Mumbai. The review for 2009-2010 will be complete by December and another set of notices will be

May tighten compensation pacts between PE players and management of listed firms, after board meeting today Capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is likely to relax guidelines governing angel funds in the country. The regulator could also introduce more checks and balances for compensation agreements between private equity (PE) firms and senior management or promoters of a listed company. The announcements are likely after Sebi board meeting on Wednesday in Mumbai. According to sources, Sebi is likely to halve minimum investment by an angel fund in startup from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 25 lakh. Sebi is also likely to allow angel funds to invest in five-year-old startups. Current regulations allow an angel fund to invest in a company incorporated during the preceding three years from the date of investment. Also, to diversify risks, angel funds will be allowed to invest in foreign startups. Such investments can only be up to 25% of their corpus. The lock-in per

Service tax has been waived to incentivise cashless transactions through online booking, says official Train tickets booked through the IRCTC website will become cheaper from tomorrow till the end of the year as the government has waived service tax to encourage cashless transactions in the wake of the demonetisation exercise. Service tax will not be levied on tickets booked through the IRCTC website from November 23 to December 31, said a senior Railway Ministry official. Rs 20 is levied as service tax on Sleeper and Rs 40 on AC classes for booking tickets through IRCTC. Service tax has been waived to incentivise cashless transactions through online booking, the official added.  23RD NOVEMBER, 2016, THE BUSINESS STANDARD, NEW DELHI

Also allows rupee-denominated cards to be issued for NRI, foreign travellers In a bid to boost the growth of the industry, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has relaxed the norms for prepaid instruments (PPIs). A few days after issuing the final guidelines for niche banks, RBI has now allowed PPIs to issue cards with balance of up to Rs 1 lakh. Earlier, the limit was Rs 50,000. "It has been considered necessary to amend certain provisions of the existing guidelines and issue additional guidelines for ensuring growth of the prepaid payment industry," RBI said in a notification. In a bid to boost the growth of the prepaid payment industry, RBI has also introduced a new category of open system PPIs. With this, a card can now be issued to the dependant or family member only if the account is fully Know Your Customer compliant (KYC). And only one card per beneficiary can be introduced. For such PPIs, the maximum cash out allowed per month is Rs 25,000 and Rs 10,000 per transaction.

Grains, non-mineral water might be on the list; biscuits, butter and cheese might attract GST About 80 items are likely to make it to the exemption list under the proposed goods and services tax (GST), including grains, green coconut, poha, unprocessed green tea leaves, and non-mineral water. Items such as coffee and processed foods like biscuits, rusk, butter and cheese currently exempted from excise duty, may draw GST. There are currently around 300 items in the exemption list from central excise duty and 90 from the states value added. A committee of officials headed by Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia is preparing the item-wise list for GST rates. Hectic lobbying was done for segment-wise GST rates. Sources said the committee of officials received over 16,000 representations. For instance, sources said, makers of refrigerators in 200 litre category with chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) made a representation to bring this item in the 18% slab as against the 28% slab. The item, they said, wa

Continued lack of consensus at next meeting could cast shadow on GST rollout by April 1 Most issues related to the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST) taken up by the GST Council have been resolved. But administrative control over assessees has become a  prickly matter, dividing the Centre and states. Even an informal meeting between Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and state finance ministers failed to resolve the matter on Sunday, five days ahead of when the GST Council is slated to take up the issue. While the states and central finance officials are set to meet on Monday, the lack of consensus has the potential to cast a shadow on the planned GST rollout by April 1, 2017. States, including West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, also took the opportunity to raise the issue of demonetisation and its impact on their treasuries with the finance minister. After Sunday’s three-hour meeting, Jaitley said: “The meeting has remained incomplete. Discussions will continue on November 25.”

The taxman has initiated a country-wide operation to identify suspect bank accounts where huge cash deposits have been made post Nov 8 Warning people against depositing their unaccounted old currency in someone else's bank account, the tax department has decided to slap charges under the newly enforced Benami Transactions Act against violators that carries a penalty, prosecution and rigorous jail term of a maximum seven years. In a related development, official sources said that the department has detected over Rs 200 crore in undisclosed income after it conducted over 80 surveys and about 30 searches in cases of suspicious usage of the scrapped currency. About Rs 50 crore has also been seized in these operations since November 8, they said, across various states. The sources said the taxman has initiated a country-wide operation to identify suspect bank accounts where huge cash deposits have been made post November 8, when government demonetised the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currenc