The devil is in the detail for the real estate sector. Though the Budget gave sops to home buyers in the form of tax savings and interest rate subvention, it quietly brought back service tax on lease rentals in the Finance Bill.
At present, zero coupon bonds which are issued at a discount to the face value and where interest is in-built, are allowed to be issued only by infrastructure companies or public sector organisations.
There are over 25 crore PAN card holders in the country while Aadhaar has been issued to 111 crore people.
Rules applicable from April 1, 2014; investors who have already redeemed will also have to pay tax
Merging tribunals may lead to administrative convenience, but pendency of cases is likely to increase
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday announced a slew of concessions, including a 1 per cent interest subsidy for lower and middle income housing loans, and exempted road repair and maintenance services from the ambit of service tax.
The bill says the deductor will deduct tax at higher rates than that is in force or 20 per cent in case the TDS assessee does not furnish his PAN.
The MLAs were upset ever since the cabinet reshuffle and expansion on December 22 that saw removal of Jarkiholi.
While Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu asked the protestors not to make the House a "clog in the wheel" of progress, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said they should keep in mind the larger interests of the nation.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present her second Budget a little more than a month from now. Like any other FM, Sitharaman will depend on her team of bureaucrats and advisors to frame and present the Budget.
General Budget is a terminology earlier used to differentiate between the Union Budget with the Railway Budget. Full-fledged budgets are titled "Union Budget", while interim Budgets are titled just that.
One of the most important cases which have political implications is the Ayodhya land dispute case.
Most of the Budget work is done; only some "final touches" remain. For those, he will soon sit with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh--who was governor of the Reserve Bank during Mukherjee's stint in North Block in the 80s--before his draft speech goes to print.
Days before the passage of the Finance Bill in the Parliament, Left party leaders on Friday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and demanded urgent steps by the United Progressive Alliance government to check growing prices of essential commodities. Top leaders of four Left parties, supporting the government placed six demands before him, saying these measures should be taken immediately to curb burgeoning prices.
Jaitley's concerns are unlikely to cut much ice with the Congress.
PSUs are asking for tax holiday for oil exploration and production activities to continue. The latest Budget imposes a Sunset clause for 100 per cent tax exemption for refining of mineral oil.
The uncertainty over the implementation of the new tax continues as the Finance Bill has not been passed by the Parliament. Finance minister P Chidambaram had announced in his Budget proposal that the levy would come into effect from April 1. The uncertainty over the implementation of the new tax continues as the Finance Bill has not been passed by the Parliament. P Chidambaram had announced in his Budget proposal that the levy would come into effect from April 1.
Charging the finance minister with leaving an off-budget fiscal overhang of Rs 300,000 crore (Rs 3,000 billion), which could wreck the country's economy, Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday demanded resignation of P Chidambaram to escape "dismissal". Singh warned that the country was heading for the worst kind of food inflation and the off-budget subsidy on fertiliser and petroleum would leave a serious dent on the government finances.
With the government devising alternative ways to trail black money, the Banking Transaction Tax will be withdrawn by the end of this year, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said on Wednesday. The alternative methods to catch people with unaccounted money would be provided by the provisions in the new Money Laundering Law, Chidambaram said.
At that time, nobody would have thought a construction period of three to four years would be grossly inadequate
'The economy needed 3 or 4 major fixes. The major one was, of course, the direct tax structure, but we ended up complicating the existing convoluted tax structure,' says M R Venkatesh, chartered accountant and lawyer.
The finance minister said the early signs of improvement in the Indian economy are seen despite no big recovery visible in the global economy.
The income tax department on Friday warned against indulging in cash transaction of Rs 2 lakh or more, saying that the receiver of the amount will have to cough up an equal amount as penalty.
Life insurers have decided to pass on service tax to customers. The chief financial officers of life insurance companies met last Wednesday and have decided to pass on the service tax burden to customers, confirmed officials of various life insurance companies.
The entire Budget-making exercise will be advanced by 3-4 weeks so as to complete the legislative part of financial business before April 1, the start of a financial year
Jaitley also dismissed criticism that lower taxes were aimed at helping corporates.
Government on Tuesday said it will soon come out with a new Income Tax Code to streamline the taxation structure and reduce the plethora of exemptions given to various segments of taxpayers. The new tax code would become law after debate and deliberations. Direct tax code would replace the existing Income Tax Act, which was enacted in 1961 and would subsume other direct tax legislations. Together with indirect tax exemptions, direct tax exemptions are leading to revenue loss.
The finance ministry, in the explanatory memorandum to the Finance Bill 2008-09, proposes to withdraw the tax holiday which has been a window the petroleum ministry has been using to market the oil and gas exploration blocks under the New Exploration and Licensing Policy (Nelp) since 1999. The commitment to give a 7-year tax holiday to companies producing gas from Nelp blocks was finalised by the Union Cabinet after consultation with the finance ministry.
Denying any delay in the introduction of Income Tax Code that will comprehensively review current income rates and slabs, Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Thursday said the government will introduce the code this year.
The government planned to borrow 10-15 per cent of the total borrowing offshore. That works out to at least Rs 71,000 crore, or about $10.4 billion at Friday's exchange rate.
The implementation of the commodities transaction tax is likely to be delayed to the end of the year or even next year, thanks to the spiralling inflation and its political fallout.
The government on Tuesday announced changes in excise duty from specific to value based for cement priced above Rs 250 per bag of 50 kg, a move manufacturers say would increase the production cost.The industry, however, was non-committal on whether it would pass on the increased burden to consumers.
The number of high-end taxpayers declaring income of more than Rs 10 lakh per annum have doubled to 1.77 lakh during the assessment year 2006-07, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said. Intervening in the debate on the Finance Bill 2008 in the Lok Sabha, he said there were about 97,000 taxpayers with an income of Rs 10 lakh per annum when the UPA government assumed office in 2004.
The last date for bidding is being pushed back from April 25 to May 9 to allow Finance Minister P Chidambaram to clear the air on the seven-year income tax holiday for oil and gas production, when he replies to Finance Bill in Parliament in next couple of week, officials said. "There is no formal decision yet, but this is the line of thinking and an announcement is likely soon," an official said.
The first step in tax saving through family tax planning is to adopt the concept of divide and rule. The simple rule is that each family member must have his or her independent source of income so as to legally become an independent tax payer under the provisions of the income tax law. Under the income tax law it is not possible to arbitrarily divide one's income amongst different members of the family - and then pay lower tax in the names of different family members.
Due to Opposition anger over the non-availability of the finance minister during discussion on the Finance Bill in the Parliament.
The authorities had sought explanation from these 18 lakh entities through SMS and emails
One of the bold proposals in the Finance Bill, 2007, is amendments in the law relating to valuation of imported and export goods
The idea is to get the budget passed by Parliament along with Appropriations Bill and the Finance Bill by the end of March as this would ensure implementation of the Budget proposals from April 1.
But commerce ministry works on rules for exemption to contractors.
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