The Centre on Friday said it will persuade states to reach a consensus on the Goods and Services Tax so that it can be implemented from April 1 next year.
He's the hero for forging consensus on GST, popular in the Left Front and among his students, but industrialists are less than enamoured.
Companies such as ONGC and Reliance have not been able to meet their work commitments for the blocks they had won under the New Exploration Licensing Policy rounds because of a crunch in availability of deep-sea drilling rigs. The official said oil ministry is moving a note for the consideration of Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs for giving a drilling holiday from January 1, 2008, to December 31, 2010, for 33 blocks awarded in the fifth round of NELP.
The empowered committee on GST headed by West Bengal finance minister Asim Dasgupta has agreed to a dual structure of the proposed indirect tax regime, which is likely to be introduced from April 2010. The new tax regime would do away with most of the indirect taxes levied at the Centre like excise and services tax, and VAT and Octroi at the State level.
Panel also demanded power to go for additional market borrowing than stipulated.
The Centre will set up a high-level committee of secretaries for processing the Sixth Pay Commission's report for its employees. The Empowered Committee of Secretaries will be headed by Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar, Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said after the Cabinet meeting.
The Centre and the state governments have agreed not to unilaterally change the tax rate on goods and services, once the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is implemented from April 2010.
In a move that will significantly reduce paperwork for producers of goods and services, the draft recommendations submitted by the all-states joint working group on goods and services tax (GST) have said one document will have to be filed.
Kerala-based Kinfra Film & Video Park has received the commerce ministry's approval to set up an International Animation School that is to be built on a private-public-partnership basis.
Petroleum products such as crude, motor spirit and diesel, and alcohol beverages will be kept outside the dual goods and service tax (GST) structure, which will be implemented from April 2010.
Besides central cess, the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers has also recommended to keep purchase tax and octroi, which are collected at state and local levels, outside the GST framework.
One of India's leading industry bodies - the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry - on Friday urged the government to bring sugar, textiles and tobacco products under value added tax.
He said that veteran party leader Jyoti Basu has also made it clear that the dispute would not affect the stability of the government.
SC has asked Posco to submit a composite forest diversion proposal for its steel project in Orissa, thereby putting the company in a Catch22 situation.
The panel might also decide on a new chairman.
Empowered group overrules DGH's recommendations.
An official panel on Tuesday ruled out any increase in value added tax (VAT) rates as part of a package to compensate states on account of revenue loss due to a one per cent cut in Central Sales Tax that was to have happened in the beginning of this fiscal.
Posco's mega steel plant in Orissa is inching forward with the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests clearing a proposal under which Posco will plant trees on an area equivalent in size to the forest land where the project is coming up.
The empowered committee of state fnance ministers had recommended to the finance ministry that the Centre should provide direct budgetary support and transfer more services to states on account of the rate cut, sources said. States have refused to hike the value-added tax rate on more than 250 items like drugs, agricultural and industrial inputs from 4 per cent to 5 per cent to make up for revenue loss.
DMRC-like SPV to be floated in a month for the Rs 98,000 crore Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor.
Radha Timblo, a Goa-based miner whose name figures in the black money list submitted by the Centre in the Supreme Court, on Tuesday denied having any "undisclosed" bank account in the country or abroad.
If states are to levy service tax, a combined GST will become a nightmare since a host of tax departments in each state will also have to be dealt with.
Will have to pay 12% tax besides 3% education cess.
After the Centre, the states have joined the fight against inflation. Later this month, they will discuss a proposal to exempt rice, wheat and pulses from value added tax.
Quibbling between the Centre and the states on who should provide more relief to consumers on fuel prices intensified with the latter asking the Union Government to give an account of accruals to it from the latest hike in petrol and diesel prices.
Talking about the Tablighi Jamaat congregation, Agarwal said, "If the Tablighi Jamaat incident had not taken place and we compare the rate of doubling -- that is in how many days the cases have doubled, we will see that currently it is 4.1 days (including Jamaat cases) and if the incident had not taken place and additional cases had not come then the doubling rate would have been 7.4 days."
Is the DGH right about ONGC's track record?
The resistance to VAT in Uttar Pradesh has been declining after the tax's success in 21 states.
Delhi government on Wednesday exempted life-saving medicines from taxation under the value added tax regime and decided to approach the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers for reduction in sales tax on diesel.
Punjab government has approved Anil Ambani Group's Rs 5,000-crore (Rs 50 billion) multi-product special economic zone in the state.
With 21 states agreeing to switch over to value added tax from April 1, finance minister P Chidambaram on Thursday asked the remaining states, including Uttar Pradesh and BJP-ruled states, to implement it and add a historic dimension to centre-state
The official panel on value added tax decided on Thursday to ask the Centre to cut Central Sales Tax, imposed on inter-state movement in goods, to three per cent from the current four per cent from October.
The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation is set to win seven of the 20 oil and gas blocks auctioned in January while Reliance Industries would bag six.
Twenty one states which have switched over to Value-Added Tax on Tuesday agreed to adopt uniform rates for industrial input, capital goods and essential commodities like medicines, salt, bread and PDS items.
The Centre is planning to establish a Taxation Information Exchange System to track inter-state trade of all commodities after the phase-out of Central Sales Tax.
A day after empowered committee of state finance ministers expressed its determination to implement VAT from April1, traders on Tuesday said they will "gherao" Parliament on Wednesday in protest against the new "inflationary" tax system.
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