The Bombay High Court has postponed a hearing on details of another significant court case on the issue of jurisdiction of Indian tax authorities on foreign companies in business deals with Indian domestic ones. MMM Holdings and New Cingular Wireless, subsidiaries of AT&T, have challenged a showcause notice from the Income Tax Department in the HC here. There was a hearing a few days earlier, and a new date has been set.
General insurers, both private and public, have started offering continuity of features of group mediclaim policies to employees even after one quits an organisation where the cover was originally offered. People retiring can also continue to avail of the facilities of the group health policies. The only catch is that it no longer remains a group policy and gets struck off the list of covered employees of the company. It is now treated as an individual policy.
India can surpass China as a global production hub for consumer durables with rationalisation of tax structure and policy support from the government, says a study by industry body Ficci and financial consultancy company PricewaterhouseCoopers. The study suggested tax rebates for high-end technology companies that set up research and development centres in India .
Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India asked bourses on Wednesday to preserve original records related to an investigation till the trial is over instead of the current practice of keeping the papers only for five years. The respective original is to be maintained till the trial or investigation proceedings have concluded, market regulator Sebi said in a circular to all stock exchanges.
A person earning over Rs 30,000 per month may have to pay a ‘professional tax’ of Rs 100-200 under new tax proposals unveiled by the MCD in its 2010-11 budget, which also envisaged a hike of five per cent in property tax rates. The civic agency will focus on Commonwealth Games 2010 related infrastructure and parking projects in the coming year, for which an additional Rs 1,005 crore has been allocated, Municipal Commissioner K S Mehra said.
The government should bring petrol and diesel under a uniform VAT structure of 8 per cent as the variation in state tax was putting additional burden of taxation, industry body Assocham today said. States sales tax on petrol varies from 33 per cent in Andhra Pradesh to 18.9 per cent in Manipur and on diesel from 34 per cent in Mumbai to 8.3 per cent in Tripura, the chamber said adding that entry tax/octroi is also levied on movements of crude in many states.
“Keeping in view the need for transparency in the interest of the customers… it has since been decided that Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) should disclose to the customers, details of all the commissions or other fees received, if any, from various mutual fund or insurance companies for marketing or referring their products,” RBI said in a notification.
Almost a year after it was rattled by the Satyam scam, auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on Monday announced a sudden change of leadership of India operations as its chairman Ramesh Rajan stepped down prematurely to make way for Gautam Banerjee, who takes over from Singapore with immediate effect.
AAYAKAR Seva Kendra (ASK) is a one stop computerized shop for the taxpayers to obtain services promised by the Department in its Citizens’ Charter in a time bound manner. In order to achieve these objectives, Sevottam provides for a front office to be backed by re-engineered processes and a new outlook of the personnel so that grievances of taxpayers are not only redressed quickly but also eventually prevented.
The ministry of corporate affairs is planning to introduce extensible business reporting language (XBRL) for its MCA 21 portal, which is the database for 9 lakh companies in India. This means that the companies will also have to file their documents in the XBRL format, which would inturn increase their compliance cost. At present, XBRL is being followed in many countries including the US, where after a period of voluntary compliance with XBRL, they are now moving towards mandatory XBRL filings for the domestic companies.
