A joint team of officers of customs, central excise and service tax from commissionerates of Lucknow, Kanpur and Allahabad along with officers of income tax raided the premises of certain commercial coachings and security agencies and carried out search and seizure operations recently and detected evasion of service tax to the tune of more than Rs 1 crore.
Hit hard by the Satyam scam and the damage it dealt to the auditing profession, regulator ICAI is considering a proposal to penalise audit firms while also looking at radical steps like rotation of audit firms every five years, a measure also favoured by the government.
As Chairman, Professional Development Committee, I am receiving a lot of queries/inquiries from not only the members but also the Council Members of the Institute; I felt it expedient to apprise you of the procedure being adopted this year for allotment of branch statutory auditors of public sector banks for the year 2009-10.
Dr. C. Rangarajan, Chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister released the document ‘Review of the Economy-2009-10’ at a Press Conference in New Delhi today. Following are the highlights of the document: Strong rebound in the second half of 2009-10 drives growth rate upwards
The Commissioner Co-operation has issued circular dated 27th January, 2010 and all of sudden changed the procedure for allotment of State Level Urban Co-operative Banks and Credit Co-operative Societies. This circular has also expanded the scope coverage of audit by the Certified Auditors and Government Auditors, by increase the limit (UCBs/Credit Societies having certain amount of deposit) upto that, they can audit.
Big four watch out. The audit profession regulator, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), plans to delve into some of the surrogate advertising practices of international firms with presence in India. In particular, awards given by them for entrepreneurial excellence and the promotions for such events are likely to come under the ICAI scanner, Mr Amarjit Chopra, new President of the CA institute, has said.
“The opaque system of exchange of information in these tax havens and their non-compliant behaviour are matter of concern not only for revenue base but also linked to financing of activities which are detrimental to the national security interests,” Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said at a CBDT seminar on transfer pricing in New Delhi on Wednesday.
The Delhi High Court has given ‘provisional permission’ to the US-based Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute to register candidates for its exam slated to be held in India this June.
Following an Orissa High Court order, the CBI has started investigation into the role of banks in multi-crore foreign exchange losses suffered by customers, who bought derivative products sold by the banks. Sources said while CBI has already questioned the officials of a top public sector bank, it might call officials from other banks too for questioning.
For the sixth year in a row, the EPFO subscribers are likely to get 8.5 per cent interest on their provident fund (PF) deposits for 2010-11. The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) with a subscriber base of over 4.7 crore has been maintaining the return of 8.5 per cent on deposits since 2005-06.
