CA Online

Income-tax officials develop cold feet after eyebrows are raised over scheme A tax department scheme that allows defaulters to pay a penalty to avoid legal tangles in cases of undisclosed foreign assets has barely made any headway and now appears to have stalled. The compounding scheme introduced in 2015 was aimed at encouraging tax evaders to come clean on foreign bank accounts and declare undisclosed income. Now, after approving only one case of compounding, it's being said that tax officials have become extremely cautious about clearing other applications because “eyebrows are being raised“. They insist on getting informal clearance or vetting from either the Central Board of Direct Taxes or the Special Investigation Team probing black money cases before approving compounding applications, officials told ET. In July, the income-tax department approved the compounding application of Yashpal Kapur, managing director of New Delhi-based Everest Transmissions, a manufacturer

GSTN to get real time import data from CBEC for levy of iGST, says official Come November 8, and the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), which is expected to provide common and shared IT infrastructure for GST implementation, will on-board to its platform the details of about 80 lakh existing assessees of excise, value-added tax, customs and service tax, a top official said. “On this date (November 8), we are releasing enrolments. This means getting these existing eight million assessees on to our system. This move will help them do business without any hassle from April 1 next year, which is the likely GST implementation date,” Prakash Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, GSTN, told BusinessLine on the sidelines of a PHDCCI event here on Friday. Kumar noted that although assessee details will come onto the GSTN platform, the existing assessees will not be able to “play around” with their returns from November 8 itself. The objective is to clean the data, sort out inconsistencies

The Goods and Services Tax Council, which will decide the GST rates, has discussed levying 16% GST rate on gold jewellery, cutting customs duty on gold to 2% from 10%, and levying 4% GST on gold bullion, two persons privy to the discussions told ET. If implemented, a buyer of gold jewellery will end up paying around 6 percentage more by way of tax as at present the total tax comes to around 12.5%, but the proposal will discourage smuggling as the cost to import gold will fall by 4 percentage points to 6% — 4% GST and 2% customs duty. The move will ensure the Centre will not suffer any tax loss while states will get much more than the present 1% VAT on gold. Here’s how. The Centre currently gets 10% through customs duty. If duty is cut to 2% and GST of 4% is levied on gold, half of the GST will go to states and Centre gets a total of 4% —2% GST and 2% customs. And when states collect12% GST on gold jewellery (adjusting for input credit) revenue sharing will enable the Centre to ge

Senior members of the department of financial services will be present The Reserve Bank of India will meet top bank executives on Monday as it finalises operational details related to relaxations in the way banks can classify restructured stressed loans. Senior members of the department of financial services will be present at the meeting, said three persons aware of the matter. RBI deputy governors SS Mundra and NS Vishwanathan will also attend, they said. The exercise will be in line with the latest monetary policy announcement in which the sector regulator said banks need not classify the sustainable part of restructured debt as bad loans, which means they won't have to set aside money as provisions to that extent, thus shoring up earnings. RBI had introduced the scheme for sustainable structuring of stressed assets (S4A) in June that involved splitting loans into sustainable and unsustainable portions. Banks have lobbied for easier asset classification rules to make t

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday the existing provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) that do not distinguish between an erroneous decision and a corrupt decision, are hampering public-sector banks’ recovery of non-performing assets (NPAs) and their capacity to lend to the growing needs of the economy. “I can tell you in settling the current lot of NPAs, it is this one problem alone which is creating challenges before the officials of various public-sector banks. Today, a private-sector bank has the liberty to settle its NPAs and officers of public-sector banks are constrained by the provisions of the 1988 Act,” Jaitley said in his address at an Accountants General conference, organised by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). Amendments to PCA that will distinguish this distinction is lying with a Parliamentary panel. Sources said the amendments would be tabled in Parliament in the winter session starting next month if the panel gives its r

List of exempted items to be thrashed out by state & central govt officials after rate structure is finalised to be pruned Salt, bread, fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs, milk, curd, blood (yes blood, the human kind), prasad (the sacred kind), the national flag, kumkum, bindi-sindoor, glass bangles, even contraceptives -all these will continue to enjoy a taxfree run under the proposed goods and services tax (GST) regime. A few essential services will also escape the levy under the new regime that the government wants to roll out from April 1next year. All the same, the list of exempted items that will be thrashed out by state and central government officials shortly after the rate structure is finalised will be getting shorter. “The exemption list is to be pruned,“ said a government official outlining the broad principle that will be followed in deciding what doesn't get taxed under GST. But “those items that are ex empted under value added tax will likely remain out of th

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday decided to allow foreign investment up to 100 per cent under the automatic route in ‘other financial services’. RBI, however, said foreign investment in an activity that is regulated by an Act will be restricted to foreign direct investment (FDI) limits. Hence, sectors such as insurance, which already have pre-defined FDI limit (49 per cent in insurance) will continue to follow that. RBI said such FDI shall be subject to conditionalities, including minimum capitalisation norms as specified by the concerned regulator or government agency. In the financial services activities that are not regulated or are partly regulated by any financial sector regulator or where there is a lack of clarity regarding regulatory oversight, FDI will be allowed up to 100 per cent under the government approval route. ‘Other financial services’ will include activities which are regulated by any financial sector regulator, including the Reserve Bank of India,