infrastructure companies

Income tax department in the past has stumbled up on many strange things, but nothing as strange as a company exclusively providing bogus stock contract notes to evade taxes, a trail that may lead to it knocking on the doors of many auditors. The Mumbai I-T department estimates that around Rs 1,000 crore of taxes may have been evaded by producing these bogus investment losses, and it now knows the beneficiaries too, a senior department official in the know of things sai.. Full Article

The government is likely to ease the incidence of minimum alternate tax, or MAT, on infrastructure companies. The department of revenue plans to change the proposed direct tax code to exempt these companies from MAT for the first few years since they execute projects with long gestation periods. The code, in its current form, says all companies must pay MAT based on their gross asset value. In the case of infrastructure companies, this is very high since their asset base.. Full Article

Banks are making a strong pitch to the government for permission to issue tax-free bonds to fund infrastructure projects. Bankers, who are expected to again take up the issue with the finance ministry next week, are arguing that the bonds will help them raise long-term resources and reduce dependence on retail fixed deposits, whose maturity is getting shorter. In recent months, banks have been saddled with deposits in the one-year maturity bucket, while infrastructure lo.. Full Article

The government may retain profit as the key condition for levying minimum alternate tax (MAT) in the final draft of the direct taxes code after its asset-based approach proposed earlier ran into a storm of protests from industry. Other options being considered by the government include tax exemptions for asset-heavy infrastructure companies and start-ups, and a lower rate for MAT, a senior government official told. Full Article

The government has withdrawn tax benefits enjoyed by consortia of foreign and Indian engineering firms undertaking infrastructure projects, in a move that may hit the sector plagued by severe capacity deficit. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has withdrawn a 20-year-old instruction that provided tax exemption and lower tax rates to foreign firms setting up [...] Full Article