The Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, on Friday hinted at some slippage to the scheduled Goods and Services Tax (GST) system rollout by April 1, 2010. Introduction of the GST, billed as a flagship tax reform measure of the UPA Government, is considered crucial for attracting increased doses of domestic and foreign investments.
A special court will be established in Hyderabad for the trial of the Satyam scam. The decision has been taken as per the recommendations of the AP High Court and the Deputy Inspector General of the Central Bureau of Investigation at Hyderabad. Ever since the chargesheet was filed against Satyam founder-chairman B Ramalinga Raju and other accused in connection with the Satyam scam in April 2009, the trial has been going on at the XIV Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court in the city.
The Income Tax department has issued a detailed notice today (comprising 531 pages along with annexure running into 1901 pages) under section 201(1) and 201(1A) of the IT Act 1961 to Vodafone International Holdings BV(VIH BV) requiring it to show cause as to why it should not be held that the Department has competent jurisdiction to proceed against it for the default of non-deduction of tax at source from the payment of USD 11.2 billion made on 8th May 2007 to Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd (HTIL) for transfer of interest in the Indian company Hutch Essar Ltd (HEL).
There’s some good news for the industry of North-East as the union commerce ministry has agreed to have a relook into its March 2008 notification which had considerably restricted excise duty exemption of industrial units in the region. It is learnt that union commerce minister Kamal Nath had recently “assured” the Assam chief minister, Tarun Gogoi, to look into the issue.
The Corporate Affairs Minister, Mr Salman Khurshid, on Wednesday said that the Companies Bill, 2009 will also have provisions for Class Action suits that will allow investors to seek compensations from companies. At a workshop to discuss the Bill, Mr Khurshid said, “Compensation cases in India are a long-drawn-out process, with few success stories. Within the current framework of the company law there is no provision for compensation for shareholders in the event of negligence or fraud being committed by company directors.
A special court on Wednesday granted bail to arrested income tax c o m m i s – sioner from N a g p u r, Ajoy Singh, his wife, Mrinalika and two other relatives arrested in Hyderabad. While Singh was released on a bail amount of Rs 5 lakh, the others were released on Rs 1 lakh each.
Fed up of being made to run around for 15 years, the Income Tax (I-T ) department has been quick to seize an opportunity to extract its dues totalling Rs 114.17 crore from the Bhagats. The department recently filed a plea before the special MCOCA court, requesting it not to defreeze the bank accounts of Hitesh Bhagat who along with his mother Jaya Chheda allegedly plotted his father Matka king Suresh Bhagats murder until it gets a chance to recover its dues.
The Income Tax (I-T) Department has issued a fresh notice to realty major DLF even as it’s appeal against an additional tax liability imposed on it by the I-T Department is being heard. The demand for additional tax payment first came after the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), which sets auditing standards, revised its accounting norms during 2005-06.
The Corporate Affairs Ministry said on Monday that around 30 per cent of the 80,000 public limited companies are not filing their annual returns.The Ministry has asked the Registrar of Companies (RoC) not to strike off the names of companies by classifying them as defunct, even if they have not filed their annual returns for three years. This is to find out if any of such companies have committed violations of law.
With proliferation of information technology enabled services such as e-governance, e-commerce and e-transactions; data security, data privacy and implementation of security practices and procedures relating to these applications of electronic communications have assumed greater importance and they required harmonization with the provisions of the Information Technology Act. Further, protection of Critical Information Infrastructure is pivotal to national security, economy, public health and safety, thus it had become necessary to declare such infrastructure as protected system, so as to restrict unauthorised access. Further, a rapid increase in the use of computer and Internet has given rise to new forms of crimes like, sending offensive emails and multimedia messages, child pornography, cyber terrorism, publishing sexually explicit materials in electronic form, video voyeurism, breach of confidentiality and leakage of data by intermediary, e-commerce frauds like cheating by personation – commonly known as phishing, identity theft, frauds on online auction sites, etc. So, penal provisions were required to be included in the Information Technology Act, 2000. Also, the Act needed to be technology-neutral to provide for alternative technology of electronic signature for bringing harmonization with Model Law on Electronic Signatures adopted by United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL)
