The government on Wednesday favoured a levy of a minimum 6 per cent of the sale price of the vehicle as a lifetime tax by various states.
The company made the announcement on Tuesday as it reported a 2013 loss of $556 million after costs for unsuccessful exploration in Morocco and the North Sea soared.
Industry body CII has pitched for a reduction in personal income tax rates, decriminalisation of the goods and services tax and a relook at the capital gains tax rates as part of its agenda presented to the government for the forthcoming Budget. Arguing that the GST law already contains adequate penal provisions for deterrence against evasion of taxes, CII has suggested decriminalisation of GST law. Also, the applicability of prosecution provisions should not be based on the absolute amount of tax evasion but should be based on real intent to evade the taxes and a certain percentage of the tax payable, it stated.
'My suspicion is that most of the bonds were given by companies who had got contracts or who had benefited from policy changes by the government.'
The fund offers deduction under Sec. 80C and the minimum lock-in period would be three years as in any other ELSS.
The task force has provided probe agencies with a list of attributes, including disproportionate investments, debt, advances or cash, to red-flag such firms.
Karnataka Congress president D K Shivakumar on Wednesday said he has been asked by the Enforcement Directorate to appear before it on February 22, while his daughter has been served notice by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
To further tighten its control of practising accountants, the Centre has brought within the ambit of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) their "financial transactions" such as operating and managing their client firms and trusts, and buying and selling business entities. The Union finance ministry issued a gazette notification on this on Wednesday. Under the new rule, chartered accountants, company secretaries, and cost and works accountants carrying out such transactions (on behalf of their clients) will now be required to go through the Know Your Company (KYC) process before commencing work.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money has decided to create a rich national database where multiple agencies probing tax and financial crimes will pool in vital classified information to be shared for seamless investigation.
Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse has pleaded guilty to the charges that it helped its American clients evade taxes and agreed to pay a penalty of $2.6 billion to avoid prosecution.
The United Progressive Alliance government will continue tax reforms, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said on Wednesday.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday conducted searches against Tamil Nadu Electricity Minister V Senthil Balaji and some others as part of a money laundering investigation and held multi-city searches, official sources said.
The action came after investigations carried out by an inter-ministerial committee formed by the home ministry in 2020.
'The tax avoidance in India is done as much by the wealthy as the lower class.' 'There is no difference in ethics and culture and morality, and no difference in tax-paying behaviour between various Indian classes, whether educated or not,' says Aakar Patel.
The agency filed its affidavit in response to Goyal's habeas corpus (produce the person) petition in which he claimed he was illegally arrested by the ED in the case.
'We revolutionised the system in a manner so that the chances of leakage will be much lower than it was in the beginning.'
The complaint against CM's son Vaibhav Gehlot and a man described as the younger Gehlot's business associate seeks action under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
Courts in five countries including the US and the UK have given recognition to an arbitration award that asked India to return $1.4 billion to Cairn Energy plc - a step that now opens the possibility of the British firm seizing Indian assets in those countries if New Delhi does not pay, sources said. Cairn Energy had moved courts in nine countries to enforce its $1.4 billion arbitral award against India, which the company won after a dispute with the country's revenue authority over a retroactively applied capital gains tax. Of these, the December 21 award from a three-member tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Netherlands has been recognised and confirmed by courts in the US, the UK, Netherlands, Canada and France, three people with knowledge of the matter said.
The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has started tightening the noose around tax evaders. This year, the department intends to profile banking and financial services, port services and business auxiliary services to pinpoint taxability of various components to enforce compliance. More services will be profiled in subsequent years.
'I want us not to underestimate Indian voters. They can tell good work from bad.'
In what is being described as the 'biggest ever seizure of cash' by an enforcement agency, unaccounted cash -- one report said more than Rs 177 crore (Rs 1.77 billion), another said Rs 257 crores (Rs 2.57 billion), a third said Rs 194.45 crores (Rs 1.94 billion) -- was unearthed from perfume trader Piyush Jain's home in Kanpur.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said the mass consumption items such as pulses, wheat, rice, flour, and curd will not attract the 5 per cent goods and services tax (GST) when sold loose, and not pre-packed or pre-labelled. The clarification came amid protests and widespread criticism by Opposition Members of Parliament over foisting GST on daily-use essentials and subsequent price rise. The all-powerful GST Council, chaired by the Union minister, had last month decided to impose GST on some mass consumption items to simplify the rate structure, which came into effect on Monday.
On one hand, South Indian states have been complaining about denial of a proportionate portion of the sharable funds from the Centre, based on population. On the other hand, they stand to lose Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha seats that again are based on population, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The exemption from MAT does not apply retroactively.
GAAR will not override the recently revised double taxation avoidance agreements with Mauritius and Singapore.
UK-based Cairn Energy PLC on Tuesday said it will drop litigations to seize Indian properties in countries ranging from France to the US, within a couple of days of getting a USD 1 billion refund resulting from the scrapping of a retrospective tax law.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Wednesday said the accused in the Kanhaiya Lal killing case in Udaipur were 'linked' to the Bharatiya Janata Party and should have been 'hanged by now' but the investigation by the National Investigation Agency was not progressing as it should.
With investors asking for a change in the board structure at Byju's, the edtech giant's founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Byju Raveendran, is now asking them to put $300 million into the company for more control. The company has rung up $5.8 billion from investors such as General Atlantic, Sofina, the Qatar Investment Authority, Sumeru Ventures, Vitruvian Partners, BlackRock, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Sequoia, Silver Lake, Bond Capital, Tencent, and Tiger Global.
Displaying 'ARMY' on private transport is an attempt to milk the respect and reverence that the common citizen has for a person in the armed forces, observes Colonel K Thammayya Udupa (retd). By writing 'ARMY' and displaying regimental insignias, we expect a few misdemeanours to be overlooked.
Chaudhari was released from Arthur Road Jail in central Mumbai after completion of formalities, including furnishing of a cash bail of Rs 1 lakh, his lawyer Mohan Tekavde said.
The Enforcement Directorate on Friday arrested the special secretary of the Chhattisgarh excise department in a money laundering case linked to the alleged Rs 2,000 crore liquor syndicate scam in the state.
The note guides taxman to avoid seeking voluminous details.
Recently, the government had appointed former Chief Justice of India R C Lahoti as arbitrator in the tax dispute case.
Cairn Energy and Air India have jointly asked a New York federal court to stay further proceedings in the British firm's US lawsuit targeting the airline for enforcement of a $1.2-billion arbitral award. The move follows the government enacting a law to scrap retrospective taxation in the country, which in effect will result in withdrawal of the Rs 10,247 crore tax demand on Cairn, according to court documents reviewed by PTI. The British company had won an international arbitration award against levy of such taxes and sought to take over Air India assets when the government refused to honour the award and pay it $1.2 billion-plus interest and penalty.
The agency had in October arrested Sameer Vishnoi, an IAS officer of the state, and two others, after conducting several raids in the case.
The Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police has filed an FIR against former BharatPe co-founder Ashneer Grover, his wife Madhuri Jain Grover and family members Deepak Gupta, Suresh Jain and Shwetank Jain for an alleged Rs 81 crore fraud after a complaint by the fintech unicorn. The FIR, a copy of which has been seen by PTI, was filed under eight sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 406 that deals with criminal breach of trust, 420 (cheating and dishonesty), 467 and 468 (forgery). BharatPe in the complaint alleged that Grover and his family caused damages of about Rs 81.3 crore through illegitimate payments to bogus human resource consultants, inflated and undue payments through passthrough vendors connected to the accused, sham transactions in input tax credit and payment of penalty to GST authorities, illegal payment to travel agencies, forged invoices by Madhuri Jain and destruction of evidence.
Since 2009, the Department has publicly charged 73 account holders and 35 professionals with violations arising from their offshore banking activities, and 72 individuals have plead guilty or were convicted at trial.
A Delhi court on Tuesday sent to 10-day judicial custody NewsClick founder Prabir Purkayastha and human resources department head Amit Chakravarty, arrested in a case lodged under anti-terror law UAPA over allegations that the news portal received money to spread pro-China propaganda.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said taxpayer base has almost doubled to 1.28 crore in four years of rollout of the historic tax reform and the enhanced GST mop up in the recent months should now be the "new normal". In a written message to tax officers on the fourth anniversary of GST rollout, she said implementing any reform of this scale in a large and diverse country like India can be highly challenging, but GST has brought about ease in taxpayer compliance and reduced common man's tax burden.
The HC has also directed the premier agency to submit an action taken report before February 22 in the case registered under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
