Archive for July, 2008

The Central Board of Direct Taxes has decided to relax norms on scrutiny of tax payers whose premises have been surveyed by the officials, a step aimed at encouraging evaders to pay up. The decision is likely to provide relief to thousands of taxpayers and it would save them from harassment at the hands of taxmen apart from litigation costs, said a senior Finance Ministry official. The decision has been taken following Finance Minister P Chidambaram' s assertion that go.. Full Article

Sick industrial units may no longer have to wait for decades for the authorities to decide whether they should be revived or liquidated. To fast-track the determination of industrial sickness of enterprises, the government is planning to expand the scope of the Company Law Board (CLB) to assess whether a sick unit should be liquidated or revived. At present, this procedure is carried out by the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR), which would be woun.. Full Article

NEW SCRUTINY NORMS FOR FINANCIAL YEAR 2007-08 - In super cession of earlier instructions on the above subject the Board hereby lays down the following procedure for selection of returns / cases of Non-Corporate Assessees for scrutiny during the current financial year i.e. 2007-08. Full Article

Appointment of branch statutory auditors of Public Sector Banks - Chartered Accountants from North Eastern Region. RBI has decided to relax the eligibility norm in respect of professional standing of individual auditors/proprietar y audit firms from the North-Eastern Region (viz. the states of Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura) by reducing the period from 3 years to 1 year from the year 2008-09 and onwards. Full Article

Service charges (assessee’s appeal) (i)      whether the services rendered benefited group companies. (ii)     whether the expenses were incurred to take care of the TCCC brand image. (iii)    whether rendering services to the bottlers could be a ground for making disallowance. (iv)     whether disallowance of foreign travel expenses of the wives was justified. Full Article

We also find that the Board vide its Service Tax instructions F.No.B..43/5/97-TRU, dated 2.7.97 held in para 3.5 that the expenses incurred on account of reimbursable expenses shall not form part of the value of the taxable services. To the same effect is another instruction being Service Tax F.No.B11/98-TRU, dated 7.10.98. Full Article

A provision does not become an exemption provision merely because the marginal notes to the section or the heading of the section call it so.Tax law contains chapters dealing with incomes which do not form part of total income. There are chapters dealing with deductions and allowances. Chapter III refers to various incomes which are exempt from tax. It excludes certain types of income from the ambit of ‘total income’ as defined under the Income-Tax Act, 1961. Full Article