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Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday indicated corporate tax rate would be brought down further to attract investors. He also assured investors that the government will maintain stability in tax policies. The finance minister has already underlined the need to bring down the corporate tax rate from the current 30% to 25% over the next four years. The corporate tax rate in China is 25%, while in Singapore it is 17%. In the US, it is over 35%. “We have been trying to maintain stability of tax policy…and one of the efforts is that corporate tax must be brought down to globally competitive rates because assesses world-over will be watching. Why should investors invest in jurisdictions where they have to pay higher rates?” Jaitley said while speaking at a Ficci function. The minister also said that quoting t he Permanent Account Number (PAN) for transactions beyond a particular limit would be gradually made mandatory, a move that is expected to reduce generation and circulati

The Central Board of Direct Taxes ( CBDT) on Thursday directed the income- tax department to “ expeditiously” issue refunds worth Rs. 5,000 for past three assessment years to provide immediate relief to taxpayers. The CBDT issued directions in this regard and said pending refunds of Rs. 5,000 in cases that have not been selected for scrutiny for assessment years 2013- 14, 2014- 15 and 2015- 16 should be issued fast and within this financial year. Business Standard New Delhi,15th July 2016

Retirement fund body Employees Provident Fund Organisation ( EPFO) has relaxed the provision that requires furnishing of universal account number ( UAN) for the settlement of claims like provident fund ( PF) withdrawal for all those who left membership before January 1, 2014. The EPFO had made it a must to provide UAN on claims in December last year. " The decision to relax this condition of providing UAN for claim settlement was taken after considering difficulties being faced by those members who were not alloted UAN," an official said. Business Standard New Delhi,15th July 2016

The finance ministry on Thursday extended the deadline for payment of tax and penalty under the scheme to disclose previously unreported money, allowing this to be done in three instalments by September 30 next year. The ministry also clarified that black money declarants using the window cannot pay tax from undisclosed income. Earlier, the declarant had to pay tax, cess and penalty by November 30. Now, the first instalment of 25 per cent under the Income Declaration Scheme- 2016, will have to be paid by November, to be followed by another 25 per cent by March 31, 2017. The remaining amount will have to be paid to the exchequer by September 30, 2017. The extension of time for payment was based on feedback, that it was too short a time to pay tax, cess and penalty The income tax department also came out with a fourth set of clarifications on the scheme. There were earlier reports that payment could be made out of the undisclosed income, without including this in the income dec

Maruti Suzuki, Tata Steel, BPCL, UltraTech and Coal India may report 3-12% increase in earnings after to the implementation of new Indian Accounting Standard (Ind-AS).On the other hand, earnings of ITC, Bharti Infratel, Lupin, and Arvind may fall by 4-10%.Companies each with networth of `500 crore or more will adopt the new standards in FY17. The transition will have a considerable impact on the computation of revenue, operating profit, net profit, and networth of the listed companies. Sectors including metals, telecoms, oil & gas, and real estate are likely to be impacted most. According to analyst estimates, the new norms will increase revenues by 4-5%, while overall EBITDA may drop by 2-3%. Sebi has given publicly-listed companies additional one month to declare results for the June and the September quarters to comply with the new norms. The new standards Every country stipulates a method for companies to report financial data based on rules called accounting standards. Ind

The income tax department will start settling the piles of over 300,000 pending tax disputes starting september. These disputes are pending at various benches of the Income tax Appellate Tribunals(ITAT) across India, according to a financial ministry official. To this end, the revenue department has asked the over 300 commissioners of the income tax -appeals(the first-level appellate aythority), to start sending notices to individuals and entities for resolving their cases under the one-time dispute settlement window,which was introduced in this year's budget. The income tax dispute resolution scheme,2016 will run till december 31 this year. As per the contours of the scheme,dispute involving tax claims below 10 lakh,the settelment can be done by just paying the basic tax arrers without  penalty will also have to be paid apart from tax and interest to settle the dispute. "In addition to the individual notices, the tax department will soon come out with a set of FAQ

The Income-Tax department has widened the ATMbased validation system for filing e-ITRs by taxpayers with the nclusion of Axis Bank, after SBI, as part of its measure to enhance the paperless regime of filing the annual I-T returns. “Now, Electronic Verification Code (EVC) can also be generated by pre-validating ATM provided by Axis Bank.SBI had activated the facility last month. Other banks are expected to join soon,“ a senior I-T department official said. The Economic Times New Delhi,14th July 2016