CA. Uttam Prakash Agarwal, President, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), has been awarded with the honorary membership of the Certified Practising Accountant of Australia by Prof. Richard Petty, President, CPA Australia Ltd. CPA Australia is one of the largest accounting bodies in Australia. CA. Uttam Prakash Agarwal was bestowed with this honor during his visit to Washington D.C. to attend the Board Meeting of International Federation of Accountants (IFAC is the global organization for the accountancy profession to protect the public interest by encouraging high quality practices by the world’s accountants) .
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.
An Indian company that provides a bank guarantee (BG) against a loan taken by a subsidiary abroad will now have to pay tax here for standing guarantee for its associate, irrespective of whether or not it has received a commission from the latter for the BG. Seven companies which have provided bank guarantees against loans taken by their subsidiaries abroad are already under the tax net of India’s transfer pricing administration, a senior income-tax official said.
The mammoth fraud at IT major Satyam, involving over Rs 14,000 crore as per CBI, proved to be the most brazen swindling act, forcing the government to re-write corporate governance rules during 2009 and tighten the norms for chartered accountants. While the investigating agencies had a tough time going through voluminous documents to get to the extent of the scam and uncover the modus-operandi of the fraud, disclosed by the company’s founder and then chief B Ramalinga Raju himself in January, it could still take quite some time for the courts to punish the guilty.
In spite of the optimism shown by Asim Dasgupta, chairman of the empowered committee of state finance ministers, the much-anticipated goods and services tax (GST) is unlikely to be introduced on April 1, 2010. The process of Constitutional amendment to bring the new indirect tax legislation may take another five months. “It will take 5-6 months for the amendment and everything else to fall in place. Besides, wecannot start work on things like IT infrastructure as long as a final GST structure is not there,” a highly-placed government official said.
Announcement regarding extension of date for completion of the mandated CPE hours requirements for the calendar year 2009 in respect of structured learning, for members holding certificate of practice:
Issue of Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) is a pioneering initiative by the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India. The first CAS (CAS-1) was issued by the institute in the year 2002. The Preface to CostAccounting Standards issued by the institute has set out the following objectives to be achieved through CAS: to provide better guidelines on standard cost accounting practices; to assist cost accountants in preparation of uniform cost statements; to provide guidelines to bring standard approach towards maintenance of cost accounting records under various statutes; to assist the management to follow the standard cost accounting practices in the matter of compliance with statutory obligations; and to help Indian industry and the government towards better cost management.
The Ministry of Corporate Affairs is going to observe an ‘India Corporate Week’ from tomorrow. The theme for ‘India Corporate Week’, 2009, is ‘Corporate Sector and Inclusive Growth’, under which the Ministry expects the corporate sector to reaffirm its commitment to the concept of ‘Inclusive Growth’.
For the first time the state government has candidly admitted that there is corruption at commercial tax department VAT checkposts. Industries minister Saurabh Dalal in an interaction with Gujarat Sales Tax Bar Association (GSTBA) has appealed to traders to come forward to lodge complaints against errant officers.
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.
