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From bank info to e-way bills, govt eyes more data to curb tax evasion New Delhi: The Union government has signalled its intent to tighten scrutiny of businesses. For this, it is proposing to mine all data points, not just limited to direct and indirect taxes, but extending to transaction information collated from banks, details disclosed to the ministry of corporate affairs and the shops and establishment department of states and data collected from e-way bills. All of this will be part of the fraud analytics infrastructure the government is creating for indirect taxes. It will entail building a risk profile of the taxpayer using information such as sales, purchases, links with suspect firms and dealings in sensitive commodities under the goods and services tax (GST). The government is hoping that fraud analytics of the massive amount of information collected from various sources will help in plugging revenue leakages under GST by identifying methods employed by taxp

 In non-payment of taxes, the authorities will follow it up with the seller, based on the liability generated from the invoice upload In a relief for businesses, the Goods and Services Tax Council is to simplify filing of returns at a meeting on Friday, through a ‘hybrid model’ recommended by a panel led by Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Modi. The proposed model is a fusion between the recommendation by Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani and the ‘provisional credit model’ suggested by government officers. A buyer will get input tax credit based on the seller's uploading of invoices, including missing ones. This would be irrespective of whether seller has actually paid the tax. “The Council will discuss (this). It is expected to get acceptance,” said an official.In the provisional credit model, the buyer would provisionally get input tax credit once he uploaded the missing invoices. This was to get reversed in three months if the seller had not uploaded the invoices and pa

The revenue department will focus on quarterly average of GST revenues for better analysis of revenue trend, an official said.   While the Goods and Services Tax (GST) collections in April- the first month of the current fiscal - came in at Rs 1.03 trillion, the average monthly collection last fiscal from August-March was Rs 898.85 billion "The department will look at quarterly revenue trends to better gauge the revenue trend. The aim is to increase the average revenue collection from what we achieved last fiscal," a senior official said. From 2018-19 fiscal, the government has shifted to a cash basis of accounting where revenues accrued at the completion of a month would be taken on record immediately at the end of the month. Accordingly, the Rs 1.03 trillion GST collected in April reflects the Central GST and State GST which accrued in March. While releasing the April tax collection data on Tuesday, the Finance Ministry had said that in March which is

 RBI policy relatively insulated from global monetary policy: Staff paper Monetary policy in India is largely independent of spillovers from unconventional global monetary policy, says a paper from Reserve Bank of India (RBI) staff. “Heightened sensitivity of foreign exchange and equity markets to global spillovers notwithstanding, there is no strong evidence of domestic monetary policy losing traction because of global spillovers,” said the paper. It is authored by Michael Patra, Sitikantha Pattanaik, Joice John and Harendra Behera. Patra is an executive director at RBI and member of the six-member Monetary Policy Committee. He has advised rate hikes several times against the other members voting for a pause, or even a cut. The other three are advisors to the monetary policy department. “Monetary policy transmission through the money and credit markets is unaffected by global spillovers. In the debt market, however, transmission is impacted, producing occasional overshooting

Phase 1 of railways' game-changing freight corridor network will be ready by November The first phase of the Rs 81,000-crore dedicated rail freight corridors project is likely to be completed in November. Once thrown open, the western and the eastern corridors will reduce travel time between Delhi and Mumbai and Delhi and Howrah, the two most congested rail routes in the country, for both passengers and goods. The 1,500-km western freight corridor runs from Dadri near Delhi to Jawahar Lal Nehru Port Trust in Mumbai and the 1,800-km eastern corridor is from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni in West Bengal. “We’ll be making 432 km part of the western corridor and 343 km of the eastern corridor operational by November,” said Anshuman Sharma, managing director, Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation, an arm of Indian Railways. “All the freight traffic that is currently on the rail routes between Delhi and Mumbai and Delhi and Kolkata would be moved to these corridors in parts to de

GST surpasses Rs 1 trn in April, FM says this confirms upswing in economy If the governments at the Centre and in states indeed collect Rs 1 trillion, they will be able to garner Rs 12 trillion in 2018-19 The goods and services tax (GST) revenue collection crossed Rs 1 trillion in April, the highest in a month since the new indirect tax was rolled out in July last year. As many as 69.5 per cent of assessees filed summary input-output returns in April, against 64.61 per cent in the previous month. The mop-up at Rs 1.03 trillion far exceeded the Rs 898.8 billion average monthly collections for the first eight months after the GST was introduced, prompting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to say that it mirrored enhanced economic activity. “GST collections in April exceeding Rs 1 trillion are a landmark achievement and a confirmation of increased economic activity as brought out by other reports,” he tweeted.However, the finance ministry clarified that the April collection could not be

India’s curbs on import of pulses: US, Australia, EU raise concerns at WTO A commerce ministry official says India defended the restrictions on import of pulses as they are compliant with WTO rules Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) including the US, Canada, Australia, European Union and Japan have raised concern over India’s quantitative restrictions on import of pulses.India capped imports of green gram (moong) and black matpe (urad) at 300,000 tonnes and that of pigeon peas (arhar) at 200,000 tonnes in August in the wake of domestic harvest and concerns over the slump in prices of traditional pulses. The issue came up in a 20 April meeting of the committee on import licensing at the WTO with countries alleging that quantitative restrictions by India on import of pulses distort global prices and put the future of farmers across many countries in peril. India has been the largest producer, as well as traditionally the largest importer of pulses to ensure steady supply