Govt Cracks The Whip On Shell Companies

After trying to tighten the rules against shell companies through its Budget proposals, the government has decided to follow with “harsh punitive” action that will include freezing of bank accounts and striking off the names of dormant companies.Their investments in real estate could also come under the scanner, as the government has also decided to invoke the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act. A meeting was held in the Prime Minister’s Office with senior officers of various departments on Friday to review the functioning of companies which do not conduct any operations and do money laundering in India, went an official statement. The regulatory ministry concerned will ensure disciplinary action is initiated against professionals abetting such malpractices and operations in chartered accountant firms in Mumbai.
The basic approach is to prevent money laundering and tax evasion in foreign company registration in India. The government will use technology to identify shell companies. A database on these companies and their directors would be built by pulling information from various agencies. In the Budget for 2017-18, the government has proposed to impose a 10 per cent long-term capital gains tax on those who have invested in unlisted stocks but not paid the securities transaction tax after 2004.

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Roll Out Of GST - 1st July 2017; Draft CGST Law and Draft IGST law Approved in the 11th Council Meeting Held on 4 March 2017

The GST Council in its 9th Meeting held on 16 January 2017 took note of the work to be completed for the rollout of GST and after deliberations, agreed to extend the date for rollout of GST from 1st April 2017 to 1st July 2017. Steps taken to ensure rollout of GST by 1st July 2017 include approval of the Draft GST Compensation Law by the GST Council in its 10th Meeting on 18 February 2017 held in Udaipur, Rajasthan. Subsequently, the Draft CGST Law and Draft IGST Law were approved in the 11th Council Meeting held on 4 March 2017 at New Delhi. The issues of dual control and cross empowerment were resolved in the 9th Meeting of the GST Council held on 16 January 2017 in which a broad agreement was reached on the issue of cross empowerment to achieve single interface of taxpayer with the tax administration in the GST regime in foreign company registration in India.
GST Council is presently deliberating on various issues entrusted to it. All the decisions taken by the Council so far have been based on consensus. GST is going to be implemented soon in the country, therefore, simultaneous and concert efforts are also being made by the government in the form of IT readiness, rigorous consultations, workshops and training sessions for the industry and traders, and all other stake holders involved etc in Chartered accountant firms in Mumbai.

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Poem Rules Only For COS Earning Over Rs 50 Cr.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes, the apex direct taxes body, has issued a circular clarifying that the provisions relating to place of effective management (POEM) will apply to companies with over Rs. 50-crore turnover.
The clarificatory circular comes after a CBDT press release specified this but the circular issued omitted a mention in chartered accountant firms in mumbai.
“…it is clarified that provisions of Sec 6(3)(ii) relating to place of effective management (POEM) won’t apply to companies having turnover or gross receipts less than Rs. 50 crores in a financial year,“ it said.
The board had on January 24 issued final guidelines to determine if an entity can be considered an Indian resident and taxed here.
These norms come into effect from April 1, 2017.
A foreign company will be considered Indian resident if its place of effective management in a given year is in India.The rules seek to curb tax avoidance, targeting shell companies incorporate outside India, but their real control and management is in India.
The limit will ensure that only substantive cases are taken up and small companies do not clog the system Tax consultancy firms in Delhi.

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India's Growth Rate of More Than 7% is the Strongest Among G-20 Countries OECD Survey

The Indian economy is expanding at a fast pace, boosting living standards and reducing poverty nationwide. Further reforms are now necessary to maintain strong growth and ensure that all Indians benefit from it, according to a new report from the OECD. The latest OECD Economic Survey of India 2017 finds that the acceleration of structural reforms and the move toward a rule-based macroeconomic policy framework are sustaining the country’s longstanding rapid economic expansion. The Survey, launched in New Delhi today by OECD Secretary-General Mr Angel Gurria and Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Govt. of India, Shri Shaktikanta Das, hails India’s recent growth rate of more than 7 percent annually as the strongest among G-20 countries. It identifies priority areas for future action, including continuing plans to maintain macroeconomic stability and further reduce poverty, additional comprehensive tax reforms and new efforts to boost productivity and reduce disparities between India’s various regions in tax consultancy firms in Delhi.
The implementation of the landmark GST reform will contribute to making India a more integrated market. By reducing tax cascading, it will boost competitiveness, investment and job creation. The GST reform – designed to be initially revenue-neutral – should be complemented by a form of income and property taxes, the Survey said in tax consultant in India.

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Input Tax Credit On ATF: Aviation Ministry Suggest Ways to Compensate Airlines

Civil aviation ministry has written to the finance ministry suggesting ways to compensate airlines that will not be able to take input tax credit on aviation turbine fuel (ATF) under the Goods and Services Tax (GST). Since petroleum products including ATF are outside the GST regime for the time being, airlines will not be able utilise credit on taxes paid on ATF – a key input which comprises over 40 per cent Union civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said his ministry has suggested various alternatives to the finance ministry to help compensate airlines that cannot take tax consultancy firms in delhi ncr credit on ATF under the GST regime.

“The issue has to be identified, flagged and the ministry has flagged it with the finance ministry in indirect taxation in India. They have to take a call on it, what to do, how to go about it. Anywhere between 40-45per cent of the operating costs are fuel. If fuel is high taxed and that too with no set offs, they will be in trouble,” the minister said.

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GST to Ease Loan Access for Millions Of Firms Using Digitalised data.

The new unified indirect taxation in India system, which is scheduled to be implemented later this year, will bring in millions of unorganized businesses on one platform. This would effectively, Nilekani believes, help them get loans
Nilekani pointed out, though the country has over 60 million businesses, fewer than one million are incorporated and only a few thousand are listed. A digital trail through GST would help these firms get access to formal credit at a much lower cost, which would help more small enterprises get into the formal economy.
Nilekani headed the empowered group on information technology infrastructure on GST in chartered accountant firms in mumbai.
“Digitisation is the basis for credit and credit becomes the attractive reason for businesses to enter the formal economy,” he said, adding that ‘India’s formal economy is small and only 7per cent of the India’s employment is in the formal sector.

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Budget 2017 - Push or Pull To Digital Economy

There are not many changes in current indirect taxation in India regime as GST is proposed to be rollout on 1stJuly, 2017. Hon’ble Finance Minister in today’s speech, said that IT system is on schedule for GST implementation and several teams of tax officers are also working tirelessly to give finishing touch to the Model GST law and rules and other details.

This budget has been welcomed by the whole industry. The Sensex jumped immediately after the speech was over. Digital economy budget will be a right move for the future growth of the economy. With more & more digitalization, India would have new taxpayers & better transparency in system. Every stakeholder from a small shop to a big corporate is pushed towards the digital economy. Government has pushed the digital theme in every area of the budget which is a nice effort.
Therefore, this Budget of 2017 is not a pull, but a push to Digital economy. Our government is determined to lay a beautiful foundation of digital economy in chartered accountant firms in Mumbai.

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Startup Brace For Legal War With I-T

With startup fever having waned over the past year or so amid concerns over profitability and competition, valuations have declined sharply. Last month, the tax consultancy firms in Delhi department challenged such reductions at about 100 startups and issued orders seeking 33% tax at the elevated levels that prevailed earlier.
Some startups have moved the income-tax tribunal against the notices while others have approached their advisers and could seek legal recourse in the coming days.
Lets Recycle, an Ahmedabad based and Aavishkaar Ventures-backed waste management startup, was among those to get the tax demand and has challenged it at the Income-Tax Appellate Tribunal. “Entrepreneurs don’t understand I-T notices as they have to struggle daily to improvise business processes,“ said Lets Recycle founder Sandeep Patel. “When I-T (income tax) acts this way, investors will be sceptical to invest, entrepreneurship will never be born and startups will never become (large) enterprises.“ He said his startup directly or indirectly employs 1,650 waste pickers, among them 200 from the weaker sections of the society in chartered accountant firms in mumbai.

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Startup Brace for legal war with I-T

With startup fever having waned over the past year or so amid concerns over profitability and competition, valuations have declined sharply. Last month, the tax consultancy firms in Delhi department challenged such reductions at about 100 startups and issued orders seeking 33% tax at the elevated levels that prevailed earlier.
Lets Recycle, an Ahmedabad based and Aavishkaar Ventures-backed waste management startup, was among those to get the tax demand and has challenged it at the Income-Tax Appellate Tribunal. “Entrepreneurs don’t understand I-T notices as they have to struggle daily to improvise business processes,“ said Lets Recycle founder Sandeep Patel. “When I-T (income tax) acts this way, investors will be sceptical to invest, entrepreneurship will never be born and startups will never become (large) enterprises.“ He said his startup directly or indirectly employs 1,650 waste pickers, among them 200 from the weaker sections of the society in chartered accountant firms in mumbai.

GST Could Trip Make in India For Smarphones

India’s success in making firms such as Samsung, Xiaomi, and Micromax to locally produce phones could become a cropper, once the Goods and Services Tax (GST) comes into effect, as the new expats taxation regime could neutralise the cost benefits to make these phones in India in taxation services for expatriates
Since the last two years, India has been able to attract 40 global smartphone makers in the country, after it tweaked norms that made cheaper to make phones in India and sell it to the billion strong mobile subscribers. At the same time, government has been able to scale investments in electronic manufacturing over ten-fold to Rs 1.24 lakh crore from Rs 11,000 crore two years ago.
“There is a near 10% tax arbitrage for manufacturing mobile phones in India in the current tax regime. However, once GST is implemented, it will be different. We hope that the Government will try and protect the arbitrage in some manner,” said Prateek Jain, Partner and National Leader – Indirect Tax at PwC India.
A IIMB Counterpoint report released in November 2016 estimates that 180 million mobile phones to be manufactured in India in 2016, which is nearly a 125% growth over the year-ago period. This has also helped in creating nearly 50000 jobs in expatriates taxation.

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Two More Advance Pricing Agreements Signed By The CBDT

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has closed the year 2016 by entering into two more unilateral Advance Pricing Agreements (APAs) today. The APA Scheme was introduced in the Income-tax Act in 2012 and the “Rollback” provisions were introduced in 2014. The scheme endeavours to provide certainty to taxpayers in the domain of transfer pricing by specifying the methods of pricing and setting the prices of international transactions in advance in chartered accountant firms in mumbai. Since its inception, the APA scheme has evinced a lot of interest from taxpayers and that has resulted in more than 700 applications (both unilateral and bilateral) being filed in just four years. The two APAs signed today pertain to the Information Technology and Automobile sectors of the economy. The international transactions covered in these agreements include Software Development Services, IT enabled Services, Manufacturing and Business Support Services. With this, the total number of APAs entered into by the CBDT has reached 117. This includes 7 bilateral APAs and 110 Unilateral APAs. In the current financial year, a total of 53 APAs (4 bilateral APAs and 49 unilateral APAs) have already been entered into. The CBDT expects more APAs to be concluded and signed in the near future tax consultant firms in delhi.

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More Online Services May Face Google Tax

The government is likely to expand the scope of the equalisation levy, the so-called “Google tax”, to bring more digital transactions into the tax net in the upcoming budget to curb tax avoidance by multinational chartered accountant firms in mumbai. Online sales of goods and services; downloading of software, songs, movies and books; and online consumption of news are among the services that the government may consider for the levy.
“Internationally the trend is to bring more digital transactions into the tax net as multinational companies end up avoiding taxes. It was just a beginning last year when we introduced a six per cent tax on online advertisement,” said an official. The government has imposed a six per cent levy for business-to-business transactions on income accruing to foreign e-commerce companies from India for specified services like online advertisement. It has been imposed on non-resident companies without a permanent establishment for incomes exceeding Rs.1 lakh a year.
The government has earned Rs.100 crore in revenue on account of the equalisation levy so far. Companies like Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter and Google earn significant revenues from India from local advertisers. A committee set up by the Central Board of Direct Taxes to examine indirect taxation in India of e-commerce had recommended an equalisation levy of 6-8 per cent on 13 broad services based on the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting guidelines.
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India, Singapore Revise Tax Treaty

The government signed a pact with its Singapore counterpart on 30th Dec, 2016, amending their decade-old tax treaty, gaining indirect taxation in India rights over capital gains. This is the third double taxation avoidance agreement (DTAA) amended so far this financial year with a zero or low tax jurisdiction. The other two were with Mauritius and Cyprus. According to tax consultants in India, Mauritius would be the most attractive source of investments into India for debt funds and Singapore for equity investments. Mirroring the revised IndiaMauritius DTAA, the government has some grandfathering provisions (having the old rule continuing to apply for some existing situations, with the new one for all future cases) and a two-year transition benefit to investments from Singapore. The revised pact will take effect from April 1, 2017. For two years from that date, capital gains tax will be imposed at 50 per cent of the prevailing domestic rate. The short-term rate is 15 per cent at present. The full rate will apply from April 1, 2019.

There has been a significant battle by India against black money. It is a happy coincidence that by amending these treaties, there has been a burial to the black money route that existed,” said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on the revised DTAA. Mauritius and Singapore are the top two sources for direct foreign investment in India, about half of the total direct flow. Total FDI from Mauritius over the past decade and a half is USD 95.9 billion.

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Most deposited Rs 2 Lakh or More, Some Used One PAN For 20 Accounts: GOVT

REVENUE Secretary Hasmukh Adhia Thursday said deposits of Rs 2 lakh or more formed a sizeable chunk of the demonetised currency that found their way into bank accounts immediately after the November 8 announcement on withdrawal of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes wholly owned subsidiary company in India

Asked if deposits of less than Rs 2 lakh constituted the majority deposits in accounts, Adhia said: “Na na, woh zyaada nahi hai. Rs 2 lakh se upar wale mein hi main hua hai. (No, that’s not big. The bulk of deposits were those above Rs 2 lakh.) And people thought Rs 2.5 lakh tak safe hai, so most of them have done Rs 2.25 lakh (deposits) in 10-15 accounts. We have cases in which 20 accounts are connected to a single PAN.” Company formation in India

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Now Foreign Investors can invest in Unlisted Corporate Debt Securities

As announced in the Union Budget 2016-17, it has now been decided to expand the investment basket of eligible instruments for investment by FPIs under the corporate bond route to include the following:

(i) Unlisted corporate debt securities in the form of non-convertible debentures/bonds issued by public or private companies subject to minimum residual maturity of three years and end use-restriction on direct foreign investment in india real estate business, capital market and purchase of land. The expression ‘Real Estate Business’ shall have the same meaning as assigned to it in Foreign Exchange Management (Transfer or issue of Security by a Person Resident outside India) Regulations, 2000 Notification No.FEMA.362/2016-RB dated February 15, 2016. The custodian banks of FPIs shall ensure compliance with this condition.

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Demonetisation to help revive Affordable Housing Segment

Demonetisation will help revive the latent demand in the housing sector as people now hope to buy houses in transparent deals, said Sriram Kalyanaraman, managing director & CEO, National Housing Bank. In an exclusive chat with ET’s Saikat Das, Kalyanaraman said some segments of the housing sector will especially benefit from it as prices may correct 15-20% with adequate supplies. Edited excerpts…
Will demonetisation drive demand in the housing sector in direct foreign investment in India?
Housing finance is a long term requirement, and the demonetisation exercise will have a long term impact as it will benefit both consumers and the industry. Most of the housing finance players have put in place systems for e-payments and e-receipts in chartered accountant firms in mumbai. Demonetisation will further improve the use of e-transactions and reduce cash dealings. It will result in greater transparency in property contracts, which will also bring in greater professionalism in the industry. As a result, the latent demand, particularly in the affordable segment is expected to revive, thereby increasing sales.

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