Search Result for : Revenue Secretary

Ranjeet Mahtani & Sweta Rajan The Central Government is in the process of vetting the drafts of the Model GST laws. The game plan is for the revision of the drafts to conclude during the next meeting of the Goods and Services Tax Council on February 18, 2017, to ensure that they can be tabled before the Parliament in the second leg of the Budget Session commencing on March 9, 2017.  GST Rates The classification of goods across the 5-tier rate slabs (0%, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%) is expected to be decided in May-June, 2017. Meanwhile, the Revenue Secretary has indicated that the applicable tax slab can be estimated based on a simplistic formula – the rate slab closest to the existing ...

Ranjeet Mahtani (Partner at Economic Laws Practice, Advocates & Solicitors) All steps in last six months, taken towards embracing GST, an example of “cooperative federalism” at work, appear to stand diluted with the recently shortened meeting of the all-important Goods and Services Tax Council (GSTC).  At the meeting of the GSTC earlier this week (which was to last for three days, and had on the agenda for this session the sensitive issue of rates), the Centre proposed a four-tier rate structure: with a lower rate of 6%, two standard rates of 12% and 18%, and a higher rate of 26%, besides a 4% rate for precious metals. In addition, it has been proposed to levy a new Cess on a small set of ...

The Dollar Business Bureau  The government could find it hard to implement the GST, scheduled to be rolled out from April 2017, a report in the Deutsche Bank revealed.  Although the government has announced it would launch the tax regime from April next year, as the global financial services major predicted, it isn’t clear if the government will be able to set up all the technological and administrative set-up required to make the regime up and running. In its research note the bank stated, “Getting all the states ready to implement a nation-wide GST may therefore take more time than what is currently anticipated.” Listing out the obstacles that could slow down the launching of the GST, the report said some small-scale companies are lesser prepared than big companies to adapt ...

Source: PTI Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday said tax evasion and money laundering will become “extremely difficult” in the next 1-2 years, with real-time global automatic exchange of information system coming into effect. “I am quite certain that the activity is going on in that direction and the next 1-2 years are also going to bring significant results because with almost real-time exchange of information, lives are going to become extremely difficult as far as lawbreakers in that regard are concerned,” he said. In his inaugural speech at international conference on 'Networking the Networks', he said tax evasion and parking of illegal money anywhere in the world is increasingly becoming difficult as G20 has taken an initiative and various international agencies ...

Source: PTI Hasmukh Aadhia, Revenue Secretary, has started holding detailed meetings from Tuesday onwards with industry and business representatives of major national chambers as well as with the representatives of different sectors in order to generate new ideas for tax policy reforms for the next budget. The Ministry of Finance is quite conscious of the fact that tax policy could be used as an important instrument of enhancing the speed of economic growth of the country and therefore, it is important to have proper stakeholder consultation out of box thinking. This is an attempt in that direction. The first such meeting was held in New Delhi on Tuesday with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) delegation consisting of Naushad Forbes, President, ...

Sai Nikesh | The Dollar Business The Central government is yet to decide tax rate under the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST), a Finance Ministry official said, adding that the rate will be fixed by the GST Council. “No decision has been taken yet…let me emphatically say…the rate will be decided by the GST Council to be chaired by the Finance Minister and comprising state finance ministers..So, whether it is going to be 25-27%, that discussion should end,” said Revenue Secretary Shaktikanta Das at an event of the Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM) in New Delhi, on Thursday. As per the existing taxation norms, the Central and the State governments levy taxes at different level of transaction of goods across ...

The Dollar Business Bureau In a move to address the tax issues concerning the Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), the Government of India (GoI) has announced a high-level committee that would look into the tax-related matters involving FIIs. A statement to this effect on ‘setting up of a high-level committee’ was said to have been made by Arun Jaitley, Union Minister of Finance, GoI, on Friday. A high-level committee, announced by the Ministry of Finance, would give its recommendations on the issue of the Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) that has been imposed on the FIIs by the GoI, say the reports. Further, the Revenue Secretary, Shaktikanta Das, was also quoted to have stated that the issue of MAT on FIIs ...