The Finance Ministry said on Tuesday that the Direct Taxes Code (DTC) proposes to substitute the currently available profit-linked incentives with investment-linked deductions for specified sectors including developers of Special Economic Zones (SEZ).
In order to ensure that Banks/ Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) run their credit card operations in a fair and regulated manner, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had issued Master Circular on Credit Card operations on 1st July, 2010.
While the number of new income-taxpayers is growing exponentially year after year, no new tax returns preparers (TRPs) have been recruited since 2006. The Income Tax was launched by the finance ministry in 2006, to help taxpayers file their returns at a nominal fee of Rs 250, by recruiting unemployed youth or people willing to work part-time as TRPs.
This notification allows for a lower public shareholding for public sector enterprises (PSEs). It also provides flexibility to all companies in attaining 25% (or 10% for public sector enterprises) public shareholding level within three years without any annual floor.
The Union Cabinet today approved the implementation of the Swavalamban Scheme to cover workers in the unorganised sector and to provide old age security to all sections of society, particularly the vulnerable sections. The proposal approved by the Cabinet includes:-
Income Tax department has come under sharp criticism from the Delhi High Court for filing appeal against tax tribunal decisions in which issue of law is well settled. A bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Manmohan said that judicial capital is extremely limited and it should not be wasted in needless litigations.
A proposed legislation to protect whistleblowers and provide for severe punishment to those exposing the identity of people disclosing information was approved by the Government today. The Public Interest Disclosure and Protection to Persons Making the Disclosure Bill, 2010 provides the Central Vigilance Commission powers of a civil court to hand down harsh penalty to people revealing the identity of whistleblowers, official sources said.
The Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India released CORPORATE GOVERNANCE VOLUNTARY GUIDELINES 2009 on December 21, 2009. The preamble to Guidelines states that These guidelines provide for a set of good practices which may be voluntarily adopted by the Public companies. Private companies, particularly the bigger ones, may also like to adopt these guidelines.
The Finance Ministry today said it has uncovered around Rs 44 crore of untaxed money parked by 18 Indian nationals with LGT Bank in the European tax haven of Liechtenstein and have raised a tax demand of Rs 24 crore. “Assessments have been made against total 18 individual cases involving total assessed income of Rs 43.83 crore and total demand of Rs 24.28 crore (has been raised),” Minister of State for Finance S S Palanimanickam told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.
Private sector banks could be allowed to handle provident fund and pension payments of government employees, giving them access to large amount of low-cost funds. The proposal is in response to a demand by the public sector banks for an increase in the commission fee for handling such accounts, which the official documents say could receive nearly `43,000 crore from the government on account of pension payments only.
