India today signed a Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) with the Republic of Colombia for the avoidance of double taxation and for the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income. The Agreement was signed by Shri Sudhir Chandra, Chairman, Central Board of Direct Taxes on behalf of the Government of India and by Mr. Juan Alfredo Pinto Saavedra, Ambassador of the Republic of Colombia to India, on behalf of the Republic of Colombia.
Government has released the Quarterly Report on debt management pertaining to the quarter Jan-March 2011, here today. The Middle Office (MO), Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance has been bringing out the Quarterly Report on debt management since September 2010. This Report for the quarter Jan-March 2011 is the fourth such report in the series. The report has been placed on the website of Ministry of Finance i.e. www.finmin.nic.in .
Haryana Governor Jagnnath Pahadia today urged the officers of Indian Revenue Service (IRS) to curb the menace of hoarding and pilferage of taxes, according to an official release. The Governor was speaking at a function to give away completion certificates of the On-the-Job-Training Course to the 64th Batch of Probationer Officers of Indian Revenue Service (IRS) at Haryana Raj Bhavan here today, said the release.
The Supreme Court today banned the production, sale and use of controversial pesticide Endosulfan in the country for the next eight weeks, holding that human life is more important than anything else. Keeping in mind various judgements of this court under Article 21 (right to life and liberty) of the Constitution and particularly keeping in mind the precautionary principle we, hereby, direct and pass ad-interim order for immediate ban on production and use of Endosulfan all over India, a bench headed by Chief Justice S H Kapadia said.
A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team has raided the premises of a local trader who has allegedly committed Rs 1.75 crore bank loan fraud. No arrest has been made so far in the raid conducted yesterday, CBI sources said, adding investigation was still on.The accused, Balwinder Singh, had taken loan from Punjab National Bank for setting up a cement factory at Mehmewala village here but failed to return the amount, a bank official said.
The CBI today raided the residence of former Jharkhand health minister Bhanu Pratap Sahi in Garhwa and arrested a retired IAS officer in Ranchi in connection with a medicine scam, which surfaced in 2009. Siyaram Prasad Sinha, who was the health secretary when Sahi was the department minister, was produced before a special CBI court of N N Singh, which sent him to 14 days judicial custody.
Union Minister for Corporate Affairs Shri Murli Deora has desired that concerted action to be taken to expedite the process of liquidation of companies which is currently taking inordinately long. In the conference of Official Liquidators organised by the Ministry recently to discuss ways for expediting liquidation process the it was opined that one of the major factors responsible for India’s low rank in the global “doing business survey” conducted by the World Bank is the time taken for liquidation of companies.
The Supreme Court, by an order dated 6th May 2011, upheld the notifications by the Custodian regarding involvement of Smt. Rasila S. Mehta and Smt. Rina S. Mehta in the securities scam of 1992. They are, respectively, the mother and sister-in-law of late Harshad Mehta. The Apex court dismissed their appeals against the order of the Special Court, which had confirmed their January 2007 notifications by the Custodian.
The government has collected an unprecedented Rs. 7.90 lakh crore in taxes in 2010-11 while refunds worth Rs. 74,000 crore have been issued during the fiscal, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Wednesday. There has been an unprecedented collection of tax revenues in the financial year 2010-11. Against an initial aggregate target of Rs. 7,45,000 crore that we revised to Rs. 7,82,000 crore, the total collections stand at nearly Rs. 7,90,000 crore, Mukherjee said in a commendation letter to CBDT Chairman Sudhir Chandra.
Transfer pricing cases will now be subject to audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, Director General of Income Tax (DGIT) RN Dash said while addressing a seminar organised by Assocham. Multinational corporations often use transfer pricing as a tool to shift cost of input from one country to another to avoid payment of taxes in nations with high incidence of taxes. India has been trying to tighten the transfer pricing regulations to prevent tax evasion.
