tax revenues

What is the Budget? Why is it so important? Why does it affect all of us? And, above all, how does one interpret the budgetary lingo flying around? Union Budget is the annual report of India as a country. It contains the government of India's revenue and expenditure for the end of a particular fiscal year, which runs from April 1 to March 31. Full Article

The proposed goods & services tax (GST) could turn out to be a far more benign impost than anyone expected.In what would amount to a radical tax reform, the 13th Finance Commission is understood to have arrived at a revenue-neutral rate of around 12%, at least 4 percentage points lower than what most believed the combined Centre-state rate would be. Full Article

States that have huge mineral and petroleum reserves, but are economically backward may face significant loss of tax revenues on implementation of goods and services tax (GST), according to economists and experts in public finance. Introduction of GST would lead to the abolition of central sales tax (CST), which is collected by state governments on inter-state sales of goods. The CST rate was reduced from 4% to 2% at the time of introducing value added tax (VAT) in 2005. Full Article

Tax defaulters beware. The income tax department is considering publishing the names of habitual tax defaulters with large tax demands pending. According to official sources, the department is planning to compile a list of all cases, where there is a tax demand of over Rs 1 crore with no pending appeals. Full Article

In a major departure from the usual practice, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has issued directions that scrutiny of the self-assessment returns filed by September 30, 2008 for the financial year 2007-08 will be taken up in the current fiscal. Full Article