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 CII urges govt to bring oil, natural gas under GST The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has proposed including all petroleum products in the goods and services tax (GST) at the earliest.The GST was rolled out on July 1 last year, and it subsumed most of the central and state indirect taxes into a single tax. However, petroleum products like crude oil, natural gas, diesel, petrol, and aviation fuel are out of the GST ambit. In its suggestions to the Centre, the CII has said till such time as this is done,CForms should be continued to avoid a high tax incidence on these products. Though the understanding is that the previous value added tax and central sales tax (CST) rules would continue to apply to the excluded products, the related sectors continue to incur huge GST impacts on all inputs without any setoff, as sales of crude oil and natural gas are outside the purview of the GST and are subject to the existing Oil Industry Development Board cess, CST Act, and state valu

GST council may cut rates of 70 items 40 services in the list for last revision before Budget A fortnight ahead of the Union Budget, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council is likely to take up rationalisation of rates of about 70 items, of which at least 40 are services. Amendment in rules may also be taken up to simplify filing and plug some of the loopholes. A fitment committee of officers has made these recommendations to the Council, which will meet on Thursday. With the aim to boost struggling agriculture and rural economy, and encourage clean energy, the Council is expected to rationalise rates of agriculture implements and unconventional fuel buses. It is the last Council meeting before Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presents his last full Budget on 1 February, before general elections in 2019. “Around 40 to 50 services will be taken up for a rate revision in the Council meeting. These are services that were earlier exempt but were taxed under the GST regime. They are

RBI can´t always bail out Banks should not be surprised when there is a sharp rise in bond yields. Rather, they should “know and understand this risk rather well,” said Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Deputy Governor Viral Acharya (pictured) to the association of bond investors, most of them being from banks.“Interest rate risk of banks cannot be managed over and over again by their regulator,” Acharya said on Monday, delivering as tern message to banks. “The regulator, in the interest of financial stability, is caught in such situations, between a rock and a hard place, and often obliges.” However, by taking advantage of the dispensation regularly, efficient price discovery in the government securities (GSec) market and effective market discipline on the GSec issuer was not happening. “Nor does it augur well for developing a sound risk management culture at banks.” The comment comes at a time when banks have been lobbying with the central bank to allow spreading their treasury l

Sebi mulls review of graded surveillance measures to improve transparency The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is reviewing the process to bring companies under the graded surveillance measure (GSM) with a view to improve transparency, said two people in the know. GSM aims to tackle the surge in stock prices of companies with poor fundamentals or low market capitalisation witnessing abnormal price rises, and which are not supported by a significant improvement in financial or operational performance. A little more than 700 firms have come under GSM since it was introduced in February last year. Experts reckon the criteria to select companies under GSM are not spelt out clearly and the mechanism is an overtly aggressive way of dealing with companies with poor fundamentals that are often targeted by fraudsters. “In the current form, GSM is dangerously vague and hatched in secrecy," said Sumit Agrawal, partner, Suvan Law Advisors. “Price discovery should be a f

SEBI  to recover Rs 70 bn by auctioning 11 PAN card Clubs properties in Feb Pancard Clubs mobilised Rs 70.35 billion from 51,55,516 investors from 2002-03 to 2013-14 via many holiday schemes Looking to recover over Rs 70 billion of investors' money, markets regulator Sebi has lined up as many as 11 properties of Pancard Clubs and its late CMD for an online auction next month at a total reserve price of Rs 2.53 billion. This is in addition to 11 properties of the company that were auctioned in December as well as on January 10 and their combined reserve price was Rs 5.52 billion. In a notice, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said that SBI Capital Markets will auction 10 properties of Pancard Clubs and one property of its late CMD, Sudhir Moravekar on February 14 at a reserve price of Rs 2.53 billion. The properties listed for sale include a four star hotel, land parcels and office space in Goa, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and West Bengal. Sebi said the bidders sh

Single GST form likely for service providers Service providers such as telcos, banks, insurers and airlines may need to file just one centralised form in respect of the goods and services tax (GST), which will substantially ease the compliance burden on service providers with a multi-state footprint. The GST Council is expected to consider on January 18 significant relaxation in the law and procedures, including a centralised registration facility to make compliance easier. It will also consider changes to input tax credit regime to allow credit for tax paid on rent a cab services, benefiting IT and ITES companies such as Infosys, Wipro and Genpact. "Council has a heavy duty agenda lined up.A number of issues dealing with compliances are likely to be taken up," said a government official privy to the deliberations. A panel set up by the GST Council has suggested modifications in the provisions of the law and relaxations in some procedures to ensure ease in compliance.

GoM on GST Network to meet on Wednesday A group of ministers( Go M ), headed by Bi h ar Deputy Chief MinisterS us hil Kumar Mo di, will meet on Wednesday to look into the technical issues faced by the goods and services tax network( GS TN ). This will be the sixth meeting of the Go M after being setup in September2017. The panel is likely to take stock of the functioning of the GS TN and also review the tasks assigned to the information technology(IT) behemoth Infosys for stream lining user experience on the portal. In 2015, Infosys won a Rs13.8 billion deal for developing and running the G ST N’ s back end office. TheGSTN, the IT backbone and portal for real time taxpayer registration, migration, and tax return filing under the G ST, had run into a snag when the first deadline for filing GS TR -3 B returns approached, forcing the Centre to extend the lastdate The Business Standard, New Delhi,  16th January 2018