Income Tax : As per news report, out of 190 recommendations made by Committee, the Finance Minister accepted 153 either wholly or with partial ...
Income Tax : Tax Audit under the Income Tax Act is currently allowed to be conducted only by the Chartered Accountant but Proposed Direct Tax C...
Income Tax : The initiation of enactment of the DTC Bill was, if one remembers right,lately announced to be slated to be made on 22nd August (?...
Income Tax : 10. Threshold limit for TDS: The present section 194J provides an exemption limit or threshold limit for TDS for professional fees...
Income Tax : As we are expecting the DTC be implemented from 1st April 2012, we have to be familiar with the DTC provisions. In general the DTC...
Income Tax : Direct Taxes Code, 2013 has proposed to widen the scope of the definition Accountant” to include other professionals as well. It...
Income Tax : The Finance Minister Shri P.Chidambaram has said that the work on Direct Taxes Code (DTC) is in progress. Presenting the Union Bud...
Income Tax : On the changes suggested by the panel in the DTC, Mukherjee said two recommendations, General Anti Avoidance Rule (GAAR) and Advan...
Income Tax : The Union Finance Minister ShriPranab Mukherjee today expressed firm commitment to enact the Direct Taxes Code (DTC) Bill at the e...
Income Tax : The committee, according to sources, wants the government to raise the income tax exemption limit to Rs 3 lakh in view of the near...
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 is huge. “It is oneof the proposals we are looking at,” a senior finance ministry official told.
A senior revenue department official told , There are three issues on which a political call is required. These are: the exempt-exempt- tax regime for retirement savings, the 2 per cent minimum alternate tax on gross tax assets of companies and the proposal to tax charitable organisations at 15 per cent. Hectic lobbying by interest groups is still on for dilution or an altogether elimination of these proposals from the final draft.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday indicated the government could rewrite the new direct tax code to make it acceptable to all stakeholders. On the tax code, he said, the government would attempt to build consensus on the proposals. “I have laid a certain proposal in the form of a direct tax code. But it is not the Bhagwad Gita and it cannot be said that it cannot be changed,” he added.
As a first step towards simplifying and bringing about structural changes in direct taxes, the new Direct Taxes Code („Code?) Bill 2009 has been released for public debate. This is expected to be presented in the winter session 2009 of the Parliament. The Code, once enacted, is proposed to be effective from 1st of April 2011.
The concept of Minimum Alternate Tax (“MAT”) was introduced in the Indian tax regime to widen the tax net. Often there were situations where companies declared both profits and dividends but were not liable to taxation on account of various incentives and exemptions provided under the income tax legislation. MAT ensured that such companies were liable to pay some tax. As per the existing provisions of the Income tax Act, 1961, certain companies are liable to pay a fixed percentage of book profit as MAT.
The definition of Capital asset continues in DTC. However the DTC classifies assets into two broad categories i.e. investment assets, and business assets. DTC envisages taxing income from transfer of investment assets as capital gains. Under the Income Tax Act 1961 (“Act”), income from transfer of capital assets even if used for business purposes was taxed as capital gain. DTC proposes to tax income from transfer of business capital assets as “business income” and the scope of definition of transfer is expanded to include business assets also.
Premium Punch:- At present, premium payment for a life insurance policy is tax-exempt provided the premium amount is not more than 20 per cent of the sum assured. Similarly, any sum received under a life insurance policy – be it money back at regular intervals, death benefit, maturity benefits, including bonus and loyalty additions – is tax-free.
Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) centers in India would be subjected to taxation under the new proposed Direct Tax Code (DTC) but some clarifications, especially on double taxation, were still needed, an expert said. The (tax) exception given to BPOs has to be withdrawn under section 10 (A) of Income Tax Act. There is no provision in DTC for any such extension of benefits. The BPOs can be taxed on the basis of the profit they make in India and also overall profit.
The Direct Taxes Code Bill, 2009 breaks away from its predecessor in many significant ways when it comes to treatment of losses. While losses from the head capital gains remain a taboo and will have to be set off only against positive income under the same head of income, long-term capital losses do not come for a harsher treatment vis-à-vis the short-term capital losses for the simple reason that no such distinction is contemplated in the entire discussion on capital gains except in the context of allowing the benefit of indexed cost on assets held for more than one year.
The finance ministry is likely to retain the EET (exempt-exempt-tax) principle proposed in the Direct Tax Code on the lump sum amount a salaried taxpayer will receive from his investment in savings schemes such as the Public Provident Fund and other superannuation funds. This means while the contribution and accumulation are tax-free, withdrawal will be taxed at the marginal rate of income tax.
