Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is likely to step up efforts to boost consumption and rural economy while keeping inflation under check when she presents her sixth straight Budget on February 1. Experts said one way to boost consumption is to put more money in the hands of people, and one of the possible ways of doing it is by reducing the tax burden through tinkering with tax slabs or increasing the standard deduction. Another proposal is related to increasing the funds under the rural employment guarantee scheme MGNREGA and higher payout for farmers.
In an online chat with Rediff.com readers, personal finance expert Anil Rego answered queries about the new tax regime announced in the Union Budget.
Maharashtra transport commissioner Vivek Bhimanwar told PTI that the Porsche car was imported in March by a dealer in Bengaluru and from there it was sent to Maharashtra on a temporary registration.
The government has created a comprehensive budget with sharp focus on sustaining economic activity and investment but more clarity is needed on areas like taxation framework for adopting remote working on a long-term basis, IT body Nasscom said on Monday. The industry association noted that the IT/ITeS (Information Technology-enabled Services) industry has been a key driver of growth and jobs in 2020 and there is an opportunity to significantly accelerate it further. "For the IT sector, one of the biggest needs ahead of us is the development of future business models, with hybrid working becoming a reality. "We look forward for the government to provide clarity on providing a framework in direct taxes and indirect taxes for the industry to adopt WFH/remote working on a long-term basis," Nasscom said in a statement.
After the massive tax evasion of GST by cryptocurrency service provider WazirX, the Directorate General of GST Intelligence has come down heavily on cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the country, said sources. "Around half a dozen offices of cryptocurrency service providers have been searched and massive Goods and Service Tax (GST) evasion has been detected by DGGI," sources told ANI. Crypto wallet and exchange are platforms where merchants and consumers can transact with digital assets like bitcoin, ethereum, ripple, etc.
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Cumulatively for the first two quarters till now, the advance tax collections from the Mumbai zone, which contributes over a third of the income tax collections nationally, have grown 11 per cent, the official said.
Increased income tax collection is going to be a major consequence of going cashless and this should promise a future of lower taxes and higher purchase power soon, says Anil Rego
Only those who stick to the old I-T regime will get this benefit.
Anil Rego, CEO, Right Horizons, answers your personal income tax queries.
Continuing our series on how to achieve Financial Independence and Retire Rarly (FIRE), Vatsal Ramaiya emphasises the importance of planning for retirement.
Recent RBI data indicates net addition of credit cards is running strong at 18 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y), but growth in credit card limits is ahead of loans outstanding. Growth in lower limit cards is decelerating fastest. The West and South have more usage and online transactions are more popular than offline, with metros leading growth.
The income tax department on Monday launched a new portal e-filing 2.0, which will make online filing of returns and tax payment easier. The new portal -- www.incometax.gov.in -- replaces the 'http://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in' site, and can be accessed by taxpayers in various regional languages. The income tax department also asked taxpayers to re-register their DSC (Digital Signature Certificate), update personal mobile number and email ID under 'primary contact', act on 'pending action', if any, and respond to 'outstanding demand'.
In a bid to provide a level playing field, the government has decided not to levy 2 per cent digital service tax if goods and services are sold through Indian arm of foreign e-commerce players.
Probe has allegedly found calculation errors by Amazon. The company paid higher GST but instead of claiming refund took wrong input tax credit.
'We went from zero to about 10 million users in three months. Paytm came out with the wallet play and we came out with the UPI play.'
Anil Rego, CEO, Right Horizons, answers your personal income tax queries.
Sitharaman added that no Union finance minister can play with the Finance Commission's recommendations.
'If taxpayers have not filed a belated ITR, they will be allowed to file an updated ITR from April 1, 2024.'
The RBI has created a stunted business model by which payment banks are supposed to shoulder the noble objective of financial inclusion without being able to make much money.
About 82 per cent of the total income from unknown sources declared by national political parties in 2022-23 came from electoral bonds, according to a poll rights body.
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, chaired by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, will likely consider on Saturday a GST rate cut for Covid-19 relief essentials and drugs for treating the black fungus disease and might leave the vaccines untouched. The meeting is being held following a report submitted by a Group of Ministers (GoM) to the GST Council on Monday. The GoM, set up by the Council on May 28, was mandated to look at tax exemption and concessions on various Covid items including vaccines, drugs, and equipment.
As long as the money has been 'paid or deposited in the previous year', an assessee should be eligible for tax relief, says Harsh Roongta.
The next meeting of the GST Council will be held on September 28-29 in Goa.
'The government believes there is still significant scope to bring more people under the tax net and collect the right amount of taxes, in cases where taxpayers are underpaying,' says Kuldip Kumar, partner and leader personal tax, PwC.
The Vivaad se Vishwas scheme is a replica of the Sabka Vishwas (Legacy Dispute Regulation) Scheme, 2019 (SVLDRS) for indirect tax litigation. The hope is that this would unlock revenue blocked in long-drawn litigation at various forums. Sources in the department say the total value at stake in these disputes would be Rs 5-6 trillion.
A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud held that the 2018 scheme was 'violative' of the constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression and right to information.
While using the family to save tax is legal and smart, ensure you use the ones where clubbing income laws isn't a concern, advises Bindisha Sarang.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday asked Infosys and its chairman Nandan Nilekani to fix technical glitches being encountered on the income tax department's new e-filing website, after users flooded her Twitter timeline with complaints. Infosys was in 2019 awarded a contract to develop the next-generation income tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and expedite refunds. The portal went live Monday evening.
The budget-making exercise offers golden opportunities despite challenges, observes Shankar Acharya, former chief economic adviser to the Government of India.
Walmart-owned fintech firm PhonePe said it has crossed 500 million lifetime registered users on its platform. With this milestone, 1 in 3 Indians are now on PhonePe. The company said it is the first Indian internet company to have reached this scale globally. This milestone has been achieved in just over 7 years since the PhonePe UPI (Unified Payments Interface) payments launched in August 2016.
The Income Tax Department has detected "concealment of income" to the tune of Rs 17 crore after recent raids on institutions linked to former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh and his family members, official sources claimed on Monday.
Within the next two years, verification and scrutiny of returns will happen electronically through anonymised back offices manned by tax experts and officials. It will function without any personal interface between taxpayers and tax officers. Both the taxpayer and the tax officer will not know each other -- who is scrutinising whose return, and at which place, points out Kuldip Kumar, partner and leader personal tax, PwC.
Have you planned to file your income tax return? But, did you check Form 26AS before tax filing? If you haven't verified it, you could be looking at trouble
If an individual invests in the specified tax saving schemes of the government, the effective tax-free income limit will be Rs 650,000 a year.
The central government is likely to exceed the budgeted tax collection target of Rs 22.2 trillion for the current fiscal year, led by better indirect tax mop-up, compliance measures, and recovery in most sectors following the second wave of the Covid pandemic. Personal income and corporate tax collections (net of refunds) grew 74 per cent to Rs 5.70 trillion in the first half of the current financial year, driven mainly by advance tax and TDS payments. The target for the current fiscal year is Rs 11.08 trillion; higher taxes are paid usually towards the end of a fiscal year.
It had declined by slightly over 4 per cent in December. The city contributes 37 per cent to the total direct tax revenues. If the trend continues, it could affect the Budget estimates of Rs 13 trillion for the current fiscal year.
Edtech firm Think and Learn Private Ltd, owner of Byju's, on Thursday said neither the company's founder and CEO Byju Raveendran nor any other board member will attend the extraordinary general meeting called by some select investors. Shareholders at Byju's are set to vote on Friday on a resolution brought by some investors to oust founder CEO Byju Raveendran and his family members over alleged "mismanagement and failures". Byju's has called the EGM "procedurally invalid" and contractually in contravention of the company's article of association and shareholder's agreement.
rediffGURU Ramalingam Kalirajan answers your personal finance queries.
After the income tax department indicated that the Tamilnad Mercantile Bank (TMB) did not provide the complete details of transactions worth up to Rs 3,610 crore, sources told Business Standard that this was due to a technical glitch. The bank has now submitted all the required documents in the past few days. According to the Income Tax (I-T) department, TMB had not submitted a statement of financial transactions (SFT) pertaining to cash deposits of around Rs 2,700 crore involving more than 10,000 accounts.
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.
