With the government and the Reserve Bank of India taking steps to ease the liquidity crunch, home borrowers and small enterprises may get 25-50 basis points relief from high interest rates in the short term.
The finance ministry is likely to float a discussion paper next month on the proposed new income tax law, which aims to simplify the existing law and phase out tax exemptions.
'There has been an enormous amount of attention paid to issues like capital account convertibility, bank privatisation and bank priority sector norms. There are many other areas where reforms are less controversial, but perhaps as important,' the report of the high-level Committee on Financial Sector Reforms headed by Raghuram Rajan, a professor at Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, said.
The Income Tax Department has put real estate firms, who developed housing projects for low- and medium-income groups, under the scrutiny for wrongful tax exemption claims.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes is considering a proposal to widen the ambit of the Annual Information Return to cover cash cards issued by non-banking financing companies in the country, official sources said. The AIR currently covers seven kinds of transactions, including cash deposits in savings bank accounts of over Rs 10 lakh in a year, credit card billing of over Rs 200,000 a year and purchase of property over Rs 30 lakhs (Rs 3 million).
A separate law for faster enforcement of high-value business contracts is on the anvil. The aim is to boost the business and investment climate in India, a country that many perceive is bedevilled by difficulties in doing business.
Decision on additional Rs 2 lakh debt at 7% rate shortly.
In another instance of Indian tax authorities adopting a hard-nosed stance to prevent abuse of tax avoidance treaties, the revenue department recently opposed a proposal of a Cyprus-based company to increase its stake in an Indian telecom services company from 40 per cent to nearly 74 per cent.
The Income Tax Department has decided to hike the tax deducted at source rate to 10 per cent, taking the total incidence to 11.33 per cent (including 3 per cent education cess and 10 per cent surcharge), as against the existing incidence of 2.33 per cent, official sources told Business Standard.
Be ready to pay service charges if you are sending money home using the State Bank of India's network of over 10,000 branches.
The government is likely to list four or five more of state-owned companies, which include Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Ltd, Manganese Ore India Ltd and Cochin Shipyard, by March next year. A senior government official said the government plans to dilute up to 10 per cent in these companies.
The Delhi-headquartered bank had favoured private placement over an initial public offer due to the stock market's volatility, a source familiar with the development said. "An initial public offer now is out of question," the source said. The private placement of shares is likely to be with public sector companies Life Insurance Corporation, UTI and Small Industries Development Bank of India but private sector participation is not completely ruled out.
The move is being viewed as an effort by the government to expand the taxpayer base.
The world economy has slipped into a state of stagflation, says Reddy.
The Income Tax Department will soon ask the BCCI to pay the taxes under Section 11 (4) of the Income Tax Act, 1961, which deals with commercial activity of trusts. This means that the board will pay taxes at the rate of 33.99 per cent on from the current financial year.
In an earlier analysis for the period till April 26, it had been found that of the 365 items in the WPI, the index for as many as 166 items had not been revised for more than four months. The latest analysis as of June 21 shows that the index for around 55 of these 166 items has been revised. In effect, only one-third of the items have seen an index revision. During this period, headline inflation has moved from 8.27 per cent to 11.63 per cent.
The implementation of the commodities transaction tax is likely to be delayed to the end of the year or even next year, thanks to the spiralling inflation and its political fallout.
The much awaited implementation of the over Rs 71,000 crore (Rs 710 billion) farm debt waiver and relief scheme got underway on Thursday with public sector banks, regional rural banks and cooperatives displaying names of the beneficiaries at branches.
The move aimed at blunting Finance Ministry, RBI's opposition to monthly reporting.
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