As a step towards the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST), the finance ministry plans to come up with a discussion paper on a negative list for services by the end of the next month.
The new limits for filing appeals by the Income Tax department before the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), high courts and the Supreme Court have been revised to Rs 3 lakh, Rs 10 lakh and Rs 25 lakh, respectively, from Rs 2 lakh, Rs 4 lakh and Rs 10 lakh.
The Bill - to centrally regulate microfinance institutions (MFIs) - may also cap the rates charged by these institutions or limit margins, that is, the difference between the rate charged from the borrower and the lender's cost of funds.
We thought if tax rates were not increased, manufacturing units would have more profits and that would be further invested in growth. Automatically, with growth, taxes go up.
Government will get an additional tax of Rs. 2,110 crore from proposed changes.
The National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange have given their in-principle approvals for collecting stamp duty.
There will be capital gains tax of 20 per cent with indexation.
A finance ministry official said since the service tax was capped at Rs 100 for domestic and Rs 500 for international travel, in many cases, the credit of tax paid on inputs used to provide services was more than the service tax paid by the airline.
G-20, the grouping of developed and emerging market economies, will focus on food security but issues concerning India like rising prices of vegetables may not come up for discussions at a meeting in Paris next week.
The government may have to wait a little longer to get a trail of illegal money stashed by Indians in Liechtenstein.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and other finance ministry officials have reached the last leg of pre-Budget consultations.
After increasing the direct tax collections target in 2010-11 by Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion), the finance ministry now plans to raise the indirect tax receipts by at least Rs 10,000 crore to Rs 3,25,000 crore (Rs 100 to Rs 3,250 billion) for the same period.
The move is aimed at freeing up about Rs 3 lakh crore (Rs 3 trillion) in tax value locked up in appeal.
They've proposed a sub-committee under the proposed GST Council or the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers to resolve any disputes in the tax's implementation.
Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance has criticised the government for not doing a review of the tax exemptions given to Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and an evalutation of the losses due to these.
If a foreign company pays interest on loan for carrying out operations in India it will be allowed tax exemption under the Income Tax Act, 1961, a tax tribunal has ruled.
The ruling, in favour of the government, will protect over Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) of revenue the tax department was expecting from the service.
Rollout likely to be pushed to next financial year.
Among a host of things, the Centre is planning to empower stock exchanges to collect the duty and pass it on to the states. This will be a major shift from the existing structure where states directly collect the duty, whose rate varies from one state to another.
The country will get more voice in decision-making at IMF.