Climate and sustainable development financing, multilateral institution reforms, regulation of digital assets, the spillover effect on developing economies from actions of western central banks, energy and food security in the backdrop of war in Europe, and sanctions on Russia and their impact on the global economy are some of the agenda items that India will take up as President of G-20, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday. India will take over as President of the powerful international grouping on December 1 for a year. There will be around 200 meetings throughout the country, with the summit Heads of State meeting expected to be held in New Delhi next September.
Will Empire strike back to prevent a game changing election result, asks T P Sreenivasan.
Anil Rego, CEO, Right Horizons, answers your personal income tax queries.
The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the Goods and Service Tax (GST) Council's recommendations are not binding on Union and State but have a persuasive value as the country has a cooperative federal structure.
The finance ministry will kick-start the exercise to prepare the annual Budget for 2023-24 from October 10, in the backdrop of revival of the Indian economy and fears of recession in developed countries. The budget for the next year will have to address critical issues of high inflation, job creation, boosting demand, and putting the economy on a sustained 8 per cent-plus growth path. On Wednesday, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said inflation is no longer "red-lettered" and the priority for the government now is job creation and boosting growth.
India's economic image is not affected due to Adani Group's recent decision to pull out Rs 20,000 crore FPO (follow-on public offers) amid allegations of financial wrongdoings, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday.
'From the tiniest to mid-level organisations and even some at the lower end of the large-scale ones would say that computerisation and the extensive documentation and regulatory requirements for GST have made the compliance process worse in many cases.'
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has issued detailed guidelines on facilitating tax deducted at source (TDS) on virtual digital assets (VDA) or crypto assets, under which date of transfer and mode of payment will have to be specified. From July 1, TDS of 1 per cent will be levied on payments towards virtual digital assets or cryptocurrencies beyond Rs 10,000 in a year, as the Finance Act 2022 has introduced Section 194S in the income tax (I-T) Act. The department has explained different scenarios through six questions to remove difficulties.
Jet fuel prices on Thursday were hiked by the steepest ever 16 per cent to catapult rates to an all-time high in step with hardening international oil rates.
Most of the long-only funds are closed-ended. This means that investors have to lock in their money for a fixed period before they can take it back.
The levy of retrospective tax on the UK's Cairn Energy Plc is a tale of bizarre twists and turns that saw its attached shares being sold in May 2018 amid the passing of the baton from a full-time finance minister to interim one and the talks at the highest level to resolve the dispute, to claims that levy of back taxes was a result of an investigation into Panama Papers leak. The government late last month refunded about Rs 7,900 crore it had collected from selling residual shares of the British firm in its erstwhile India unit, seizing dividend and withholding tax refunds, to settle an eight-year-old dispute that had tarred the country's reputation as an investment destination. But, this did not come about easily. For seven years, the establishment vehemently justified in courts and outside seeking of Rs 10,247 crore in back taxes plus interest and penalty from a firm that gave India its biggest onshore oil discovery.
The government will settle almost all the retrospective tax cases this month, closing a chapter that plagued India's reputation as an investment-friendly destination, a top official said on Friday. A 2012 amendment that gave taxmen powers to go back 50 years and slap capital gains levies wherever ownership had changed hands overseas but business assets were in India, was used to raise Rs 1.1 lakh crore demand against multi-nationals such as telecom group Vodafone, pharmaceuticals company Sanofi and brewer SABMiller, now owned by AB InBev, and Cairn Energy Plc. Such demands brought uncertainty in the minds of investors.
The bill to nullify retrospective taxation offers a fair solution within the framework of Indian law and Parliamentary sovereignty to companies which have been subjected to such demands, Finance Secretary T V Somanathan said on Thursday. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman introduced 'The Taxation Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021' in the Lok Sabha that seeks to withdraw tax demands made using a 2012 retrospective legislation to tax the indirect transfer of Indian assets. The Bill provides for the withdrawal of tax demand made on "indirect transfer of Indian assets if the transaction was undertaken before May 28, 2012 (i.e. the day the retrospective tax legislation came into being)."
The tax department will remain a source of endless nightmares for citizens and 'transparent taxation' will remain an empty slogan and a cruel joke, observes Debashis Basu.
Retail depositors are earning negative returns on their bank deposits and hence, there is a need for reviewing taxes on interest earned, economists at the country's largest lender SBI have said. If not for all the depositors, the taxation review should be carried out for at least the deposits made by senior citizens who depend on the interest for their daily needs, the economists led by Soumya Kanti Ghosh said in a note, which pegged the overall retail deposits in the system at Rs 102 lakh crore. At present, banks deduct tax at source at the time of crediting interest income of over Rs 40,000 for all the depositors, while for senior citizens the taxes set-in if the income exceeds Rs 50,000 per year.
'We can go somewhere between 35 per cent and 40 per cent.'
As the mutual fund industry evolves, certain aspects only get worse
Mihir Tanna, Associate Director, S K Patodia & Associates, answers your tax queries.
The corporate sector and banks will henceforth have the onus of deciding the fate of their debt for tax treatment, with their decision binding on the department, going by a recent order of the Mumbai tribunal.
RBML - the joint venture of Reliance Industries Ltd and supermajor BP - has told the government that fuel retailing for the private sector in India has become unsustainable after market-controlling public sector firms frequently froze petrol and diesel prices at rates way below the cost, sources said. Despite a surge in oil prices, state-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) first froze petrol and diesel rates for a record 137 days beginning early November 2021 when five states including Uttar Pradesh went to the polls, and last month again went into a hiatus that is now 47 days old. "They (Reliance BP Mobility Ltd) has written to the petroleum ministry over the fuel pricing issue," a highly placed source in the government, who didn't want to be quoted, told reporters.
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss on Tuesday extended her bookmaker odds as the favourite to win the Conservative Party leadership race, with former Chancellor Rishi Sunak also trailing in a poll among Tory voters.
Google's chief privacy officer, Keith Enright, has warned policymakers that frequent and large-scale sharing of citizen data, even if anonymized, can damage users' privacy. Pointing to research that shows data sets lose their anonymity if shared consistently over time, he said: "I would encourage policymakers and companies to be extremely circumspect while proceeding in that direction." Anonymization is a technique that removes or modifies personally identifiable information, resulting in data that cannot be associated with any one individual.
'The kind of tax which will be generated from the second pillar may far outweigh what we may be losing in the first pillar.'
Online skill-based gaming industry has made a case for retaining the service under 18 per cent GST slab instead of putting it into the highest 28 per cent tax rate category, saying the move will badly hit the $2.2-billion sector. The increase in taxation would not only have catastrophic impact on the industry but also encourage offshore operators who would circumvent Indian tax jurisdiction by hosting games in some other country, Games24x7 Co-CEO Trivikraman Thampy said. "It would be a triple whammy -- the industry loses out, the government loses out on tax revenue and players loses out as they would be exposed to unscrupulous operators," he said.
The panel, headed by former Central Board of Direct Taxes chairman N Rangachary, will be in addition to the one set up to review the General Anti-Avoidance Rules provisions to address the concerns of foreign investors.
In a rare face off, captains of the auto industry have hit out at the government for not walking the talk. At an industry event in the capital on Wednesday, R C Bhargava, chairman of India's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki, and Venu Srinivasan, chairman of TVS Motor, questioned the government's intent to support the auto sector. Revenue secretary Tarun Bajaj sat in the audience listening, before his turn came to counter them.
The Budget oration of the finance minister and the confidence with which she delivered it, along with the measures and the recent upsurge in the economy would all contribute to unleashing the storied 'animal spirits' and help the economy run on the growth path quite smoothly. Or so the government hopes, notes Shreekant Sambrani.
MotoGP, the pinnacle of two-wheel racing, could come to India in the winter of 2023 if all goes ahead as planned, providing a massive boost to the stagnant motorsport scene in the country.
'Earlier-than-expected tapering from the US, followed by rate hikes, and locally, a potential third wave, which mimics the second wave in terms of severity.'
In fact, the Taliban apparently collects about 10 per cent as cultivation tax from opium farmers and 15 per cent as heroin tax from laboratories and smugglers that smuggle narcotics into Pakistan. This, by itself, is a revenue stream estimated at USD 250-300 million.
From March 3, investors in India will be able to trade in select US stocks through the NSE International Exchange (NSE IFSC), a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Stock Exchange (NSE). Investors can invest in NSE IFSC receipts on US stocks, which will be in the form of unsponsored depository receipts (DRs). For a start, this will include DRs of 50 US stocks such as Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Tesla, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Nike, P&G, Coca-Cola, and Exxon Mobil. Indian retail investors will be able to transact on the NSE IFSC platform under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) limits prescribed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which currently stand at $250,000 per year.
September 15 is the deadline for paying the second instalment of advance tax. This is income-tax (I-T) taxpayers need to pay every quarter, instead of a lump sum at the end of the year. Ashutosh K Srivastava, senior associate, SKV Law Offices, says, "The tax has to be usually paid when income is earned. "Nonetheless, according to the I-T Act, the taxpayer has to estimate his income for the entire financial year. Based on that, he/she pays tax at specific intervals."
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Moving quickly towards ending a retrospective tax dispute with a firm that gave India its largest oilfield, the government has accepted Cairn Energy PLC's undertakings which would allow for the refund of taxes, sources said. Meeting the requirements of the new legislation that scraps levy of retrospective taxation, the company had earlier this month given required undertakings indemnifying the Indian government against future claims as well as agreeing to drop any legal proceedings anywhere in the world. The government has now accepted this and issued Cairn a so-called Form-II, committing to refund the tax collected to enforce the retrospective tax demand, two sources with direct knowledge of the development said.
However, the department has not changed ITRs significantly, considering Covid-19 crisis.
German automotive giant Volkswagen (VW) has said it will focus on the premium sedan/sport utility vehicle (SUV) segment and avoid the mass hatchback segment. "Customers don't expect anything less than a premium product from VW. "Customers expect a certain level of quality and driving dynamics. We have to stay true to that DNA. "The day we go mass, customers will reject us," says Ashish Gupta, brand director, VW India.
UK-based Cairn Energy PLC on Wednesday said it has agreed to drop litigations to seize Indian properties in countries ranging from France to the UK as it has accepted the Indian government's offer to settle tax dispute relating to the levy of taxes retrospectively. Meeting the requirements of new legislation that scraps levy of retrospective taxation, the company has given required undertakings indemnifying the Indian government against future claims as well as agreeing to drop any legal proceedings anywhere in the world. The government now has to accept this and issue Cairn a so-called Form-II, that will commit it to refund the tax collected to enforce the retrospective tax demand.
DDT is levied on dividends that a company pays its shareholders out of its profits. It is currently charged at the rate of 20.55 per cent, including a surcharge and education cess. Government may instead tax the shareholders receiving dividends, in a bid to help improve investor sentiment by addressing the multiplicity of taxes and bring down the effective tax rates for companies.
The Indian State's arbitrariness may have come to be accepted with resignation within the country, but when it behaves in the same manner with external players, it gets a push-back, observes T N Ninan.
A sudden surge in wealth because of stock market gains after the pandemic could be one of the factors behind the relatively lower share of philanthropy in total wealth.
With the fresh wave of COVID-19 plunging the hospitality sector back into uncertainty, industry body HAI on Monday said it has asked the government to consider granting infrastructure status to hotels, extend moratorium on loans and rationalise taxes. In its pre-Budget memorandum, the Hotel Association of India (HAI) said policy interventions are imperative for the sector's survival and its early and quick rebound to normalcy. "The hospitality industry was slowly getting into a recovery mode on the strength of domestic tourism - leisure and events, only to be plunged back into uncertainty on account of the Omicron threat.
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