With high paced growth in industrial sector, India will need at least 50,000 company secretaries (CS) by 2020, Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) said on Sunday. According to data released by ICSI, there has been over 70% growth in students enrolment for CS programme in last few years.
Government on Wednesday said the modernisation project for online settlement of provident fund claim would be implemented by the next financial year in all EPFO offices. The project will be implemented in 27 offices of Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) by the end of this financial year and in remaining 92 offices by 2010-11 financial year, Minister of State for Labour and employment Harish Rawat said.
In a bid to salvage auditing profession’s credibility following the Satyam fraud, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) said on Tuesday that it was considering making public the names of auditors found guilty in scams. ICAI is the regulatory body of chartered accountants in India.
Earlier, SEZ unit holders and developers had raised concerns regarding continuation of tax benefits like income tax holiday after the Direct Tax Code comes into effect, replacing the existing Income Tax Act. The Minister informed the reporters that the Finance Minister in his Budget speech has said that the government is committed to ensuring continued growth of SEZs to draw investments and boost exports and employment.
The Budget proposals have thrown up a dampener for the housing industry. Construction services have now been brought under the ambit of the service tax in an unexpected move that would raise cost of apartments that are still under construction.
While the government stands to gain around Rs 1,000 crore from service tax on transportation of goods by railways, freight movement on the rail network may become unattractive in case of the tax being passed on to transporters. In the event of the tax being absorbed by the national transporter, allocations reserved for development purposes would decline by a third in the coming financial year.
The Government has decided that telecom companies offering 3G services will not be allowed to claim tax breaks under Section 80 IA of the Income Tax Act. Benefits under Section 80 IA are extended to companies involved in infrastructure creation. In the telecom sector, existing operators are allowed to choose a block of 10 years (out of the first 15 years of operations) for availing themselves of the tax benefits.
Fraudsters would soon find it difficult to raise multiple loans against the same property with the budget setting aside Rs 25 crore for a Central Electronic Registry. The Central Electronic Registry (CER) would be a database of all all mortgages and the banks that have a charge. So in future when a borrower seeks to avail a loan against an apartment or a house, the lender will be able to verify whether anyone has already got a charge on the property.
According to the Bill, tax will be levied on “a person covered by health insurance scheme, for any health check-up or treatment, where the payment for such health check-up or treatment is made by the insurance company directly to such hospital, nursing home or multi-specialty clinic”. This will be only applicable to cashless insurance claims.
Though levy of service tax on domestic air travel is negative, given the rebound in air travel, the players can fully pass on the impact to customers through hike in fares. The budget proposes to increase the scope of air passenger transport service is being expanded to include domestic journeys and international journeys in any class from the earlier provision of taxing only international journey in any class other than economy class.
