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.
As India's investment rate is estimated to decline this financial year, industry chamber CII has asked Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to give a boost to investments in the forthcoming Budget, but economists believe a rollback of stimulus may continue.
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 finance ministry said it would wait for RBI guidelines, a development which will provide much relief to ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank. Both are already known as Foreign Owned Indians Controlled entities, after foreign investment in them rose much above 50 per cent, following new norms of calculations by the commerce ministry.
The finance ministry seems to be gung ho about economic growth next financial year. It may peg this at nine per cent for 2011-12 in the Economic Survey, likely to be tabled in Parliament on February 25, even as the Reserve bank of India (RBI) hinted at a lower figure.
The government may have to wait a little longer to get a trail of illegal money stashed by Indians in Liechtenstein.
As the debate on revealing names of those who had stashed money abroad was hotting up, a Parliamentary panel grilled finance ministry officials on why the confidentiality clause was put in tax treaties in the first place.
Amid decelerating manufacturing growth, the Reserve Bank wants the government to come out with measures in the Budget to give a boost to the sector, which can employ surplus labour from agriculture.
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.