The Centre on Friday submitted before the Supreme Court that all the information on black money received from foreign countries, with which India has double taxation avoidance agreement, cannot be disclosed.
In touch with the Swiss government under the DTAA mandate
Other documents might be needed for investors from other nations
Mauritius promises India full-cooperation on tax treaty issues.
Mauritius on Friday said it has exchanged information related to over 170 cases with India over three years, and the two countries have made big progress on the double taxation avoidance treaty since 2006.
There is a growing concern that many entities are routing their investments into the country through Mauritius to reap undue tax benefits.
Modi said the two countries should resume their discussions on Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement.
The existing double taxation avoidance agreements will not be covered by the proposed change, implying that in order to tax Facebook, Google and the like, India will require to renegotiate tax treaties.
India can get information on secret bank accounts from Swiss authorities for cases dating from January 2011, once the revised taxation treaty between the two countries is ratified by the Switzerland Parliament.
In a significant development towards renegotiation of tax treaty with Mauritius, the Finance Ministry has written to the Ministry of External Affairs to take up the issue of including more areas of information exchange in the agreement between the two countries.
The panel's recommendations will be aimed at making a predictable and non-adversarial tax regime in the economy.
India can now sign treaties with five more countries in its pursuit to bring back black money stashed abroad with the Cabinet on Friday approving such pacts.
Anil Rego, CEO, Right Horizons, answers your personal income tax queries.
The amended treaty will enable India to get banking information in specific cases, beginning April 1, 2011.
This could come as a huge relief as majority of the FIIs operating in India are registered in tax havens. The discussion paper also removed the ambiguity on income classification for tax computation.
Prime Minister Anerood Jugnauth has termed the issue as an aberration in the "very special" ties with India and hoped that revision of their tax treaty won't harm its interests.
A tax authority has ruled that Mauritius-based companies will have not have to pay capital gains tax in the country, a decision that will encourage global business entities to route investment from the island nation.
Foreign Direct Investment inflows from Mauritius have almost halved during April-January period of last fiscal to $4.11 billion on fears of impact of GAAR and possible re-negotiation of the tax avoidance treaty.
The SIT found and reported that there was no amount shown in almost 289 HSBC Geneva entries, while 122 of them were repeated twice in the same list.
Income earned by foreign technical consultants for providing monitoring services to Indian entities will be taxed at higher rate as business profits, the Authority for Advance Ruling has said. Referring to the contract between the Australian company and GAIL, the AAR said that monitoring activities undertaken by the foreign company was not within the scope of the DTAA between Australia and India. The Australian firm was acting as a project monitoring consultant.
The Centre is in talks with Mauritius with regard to the long-pending revision of the bilateral tax treaty.
Taxing SoftBank, the largest shareholder in Flipkart with a little over 20 per cent stake, however, will be easier.
The proposed India-Iran Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement, which the two countries included in their joint New Delhi declaration in 2003, has run into a hurdle.
The Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) living in the US, UK, Canada and Singapore can now avail the benefit of a lesser tax deduction on their Non-Resident fixed deposit with ICICI Bank, a top bank official said in Mumbai. The NRO FD Plus offers the benefit of concessional rate of tax deducted at source (TDS) under the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) of India with these countries, ICICI Bank General Manager and Head NRI Services Manish Mishra said.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, who is one of the petitioners in the black money case, makes a case for the revelation of all the names of account holders that the government has submitted to the Supreme Court.
Currently, companies are taxed in the jurisdictions in which they have a physical presence. However, digital businesses generate revenues from markets without a significant physical presence in a country.
With real estate -- NRIs's favourite investment vehicle in the past -- unlikely to do well in the near future, there is a strong case for NRIs to shift to equity and debt mutual funds, says Prateek Mehta.
One of the key concerns of foreign investors is how the general anti-avoidance rule would apply in case an investor is availing benefits under double taxation avoidance agreement.
The black money law provides for tax and a penalty of 120 per cent of assets' value.
Earlier, Arun Jaitley had said 60 prosecutions had been launched on the 'HSBC list'.
Anil Rego, CEO, Right Horizons, answers your personal income tax queries.
The proposed move to withdraw the DDT would help encourage investments by addressing multiple taxation of income and bringing down the effective tax rate on companies, which is among the highest in the world.
Besides higher tax outgo, P-note issuers are worried about operational difficulties
Both NRIs and those who make payouts on sale of property need to understand the TDS provisions that are applicable or risk punishment, warns Sanjay Kumar Singh.
Black money is because of P Notes, hawala and variety of other reasons.
In this Budget, too, there were a number of measures aimed at plugging tax leakages and ensuring greater compliance, says Sanjay Kumar Singh.