While the surcharge on super-rich would help garner additional income of around Rs 12,000 crore this fiscal on the direct tax side.
The 21st meeting of FSDC comes against the backdrop of the economy hitting a six-year low growth rate of 5 per cent in the first quarter of 2019-20. Even some of the macroeconomic data for the second quarter does not portray an encouraging picture of the economy.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday reiterated that an international arbitration ruling on India's sovereign right to taxation sets the wrong precedent, but said the government is looking at how best it can sort out the issue arising out of New Delhi being ordered to return $1.2 billion plus interest and cost to UK's Cairn Energy Plc. The government, which participated in an international arbitration brought by the Scottish firm against being taxed retrospectively, has appealed against The Hague based tribunal's ruling asking the government to return the value of shares expropriated and liquidated, tax refunds withheld and dividend seized to recover a wrongly levied retroactive tax demand.
All India Rank achieves a fine balance of authenticity and sensitivity in the fine portrayals of its young actors and old.
Through this mobile application, the handset will be used for authenticating biometrics of customers making Aadhaar enabled payment.
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.
Dealing with the validity of OBC quota, the bench said, "Merit cannot be reduced to narrow definitions of performance in an open competitive examination which only provides formal equality of opportunity. Competitive examinations assess basic current competency to allocate educational resources but are not reflective of excellence, capabilities and potential of an individual which are also shaped by lived experiences, subsequent training and individual character."
The Aadhaar issuing authority, Unique Identification Authority Of India, has no data on those who have been denied benefits for want of the 12-digit biometric identification number, the Supreme Court was informed on Thursday.
The government said that the panel has recommended that family income is a "feasible criterion" for defining EWS and in the current situation, a threshold of Rs 8 lakh of annual family income seems reasonable for determining EWS.
While the tax-to-GDP ratio of 9.88 per cent has been assumed for FY21, the same as last year, when it touched a decadal low, for FY22 a ratio of 10.7 per cent has been assumed, an average of the last five years.
India's tax pie seems to have undergone a subtle change with a sharp drop in direct tax collections resulting from a disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 carnage on incomes. The share of indirect taxes, which mainly comprise of levy on goods and services as well as import duty, has risen while that of direct taxes - made up of corporate and personal income tax - has gone down in 2020. In an interview with PTI, finance secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey said in a pandemic like this where the economy has been impacted, any large scale changes impact direct taxes more severely, whereas indirect tax collection is mostly proportional to business turnover and compliance.
Experts warn of over-interpreting the numbers and said their sustainability needed to be watched beyond November, says Indivjal Dhasmana.
GST collections in March slipped below the psychological Rs 1 lakh crore-mark for the first time in four months to Rs 97,597 crore as the Covid-19 lockdown that shut most businesses compounded tax collection woes in an already sluggish economy. Goods and Services Tax (GST) mop-up in March recorded a 8.4 per cent decline over March 2019 collection of Rs 1.06 lakh crore. The collections were lower on account of dip in revenues from domestic transactions as well as imports.
Cairn has already taken steps to have the arbitration award recognised in nine major jurisdictions such as the US, UK, France, the Netherlands, Singapore and Canada's Quebec province, where Indian sovereign assets have been identified. It hasn't said what it might go after but assets could include Air India's planes, vessels belonging to the Shipping Corporation of India and property owned by state banks.
The Centre on Thursday placed before the GST Council two options for borrowing by states to meet the shortfall in GST revenues, pegged at Rs 2.35 lakh crore in the current fiscal.
Concerned by GDP slowdown and unrealistic tax targets, the economists urged Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to implement long-term structural steps like land and labour reforms. Warning against any off-Budget financing the economists said the government should prepare a statement of intent for its social, rural and welfare sector expenditure.
'It is entering growth territory on a month-on-month basis.'
While the meetings on Friday were preliminary discussions, it is learnt that sectors like tourism; hospitality; aviation; micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs); and livestock have sought deferring loan repayments and temporary tax holidays in specific cases to help them tide over the steep fall in economic activity.
The tax rate rises to 10 per cent, 15, per cent, 20 per cent and 25 per cent for every Rs 2.5 lakh addition. A 30 per cent tax is charged for income over Rs 15 lakh.
IAMAI in a statement, which represents digital businesses in India, said Trai's recommendation to formulate standards of anonymisation and de-identification was akin to putting the cart before the horse, and till such time the Srikrishna Committee submits the report, making these standards would be like groping in the dark.
Jaitley said the GST Composition Scheme, under which small traders and businesses pay a 1 per cent tax based on turnover, can be availed by businesses with a turnover of Rs 1.5 crore, against the earlier Rs 1 crore, with effect from April 1.
The opposition parties vehemently criticised the new 'one nation, one tax' system having four different rates instead of a single rate adopted in some countries including the UK and Singapore.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Centre to produce before it the file related to the appointment of Election Commissioner Arun Goel, who was appointed on November 19.
The government is likely to file an appeal against the Cairn arbitration award contesting its sovereign rights to tax, sources said.
A K Bhattacharya lists three reasons why Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will most likely present a full Budget on February 1, 2019.
A 15 per cent corporate tax rate for services companies in SEZs, setting up a fund for deep-tech startups and establishing clusters to demonstrate design-to-manufacturing capabilities of tech firms were some of the key demands made by the IT sector at the pre-Budget consultation on Monday. The participants shared their views and suggestions regarding Big Data, incentives for encouraging setting up of data centres, fiscal incentives for data localisation, incentives for pushing digital penetration in rural areas, and corporate guarantee to startups for competing with other nations.
His colleague and Law & IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the court has held that the purpose of issuing Aadhaar to all Indian citizens is legitimate and no surveillance is possible.
The additional sessions judge said there are 208 prosecution witnesses, 171 documents and 27 forensic science laboratory (FSL) reports in the case.
The Aadhaar-enabled payment system, or AEPS, allows consumers who don't have smartphones or debit cards to perform basic banking transactions like cash deposit, cash withdrawal, intrabank or interbank fund transfer, balance enquiry and obtaining a mini statement through biometric authentication at micro-ATMs.
During a series of hectic talks between Cairn Energy and the Indian government over the $1.2-billion arbitration award in favour of the former last week, a slew of options was proposed by the two sides, including computation of capital gains and participation in the Vivad se Vishwas (VsV) dispute resolution scheme. The government is likely to go ahead and appeal against the arbitration award by a Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague before March 21, indicated finance ministry officials. Cairn Energy Plc on Sunday said it was hopeful that an acceptable solution to its tax dispute with the Indian government could be found to avoid prolonging and exacerbating the 'negative issue' for all parties.
Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav is among six personalities chosen for this year's Padma Vibhushan.
The new tax rates will come into effect from January 1, 2019.
The GST rate on mobile phones will be hiked to 18 per cent while that on maintenance repair overhaul (MRO) services for aircraft will be lowered to 5 per cent with effect from April 1, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday. The GST rate on handmade and machine-made matchsticks has been rationalised to 12 per cent from 5 per cent and 18 per cent respectively.
Sitharaman further said that to mitigate genuine difficulties of start-ups and their investors, government has decided to withdraw angel tax provisions for them.
'A bold, progressive step forward,' Kotak Mahindra Bank CEO Uday Kotak said of Nirmala Sitharaman's corporate tax breaks.
The top court reserved its verdict on a batch of pleas seeking a collegium-like system for the appointment of ECs and the Chief Election Commissioner and asked the parties to file written submission in five days.
Producer Anand Pandit, who has made such films like Chehre, PM Narendra Modi, Total Dhamaal and Sarkar 3, hosted a Diwali party at his residence, and invited his filmi friends.
Quite a few superstars are bringing their big releases to the big screen this month.
President Pranab Mukherjee presented five Padma Vibhushan, eight Padma Bhushan and forty-three Padma Shri awards at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.
Quite a few light-hearted comedies are up for release, and Joginder Tuteja takes us through them.