India's Growth rate of more than 7% is the strongest Am,ong 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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New GST Rules May Impact Auto Consumer Durables

After getting hit by the transition of new fuel technology — from Bharat Stage-III (BS-III) to BS-IV — the automobile sector in the country may be awaiting yet another shocker. The proposed taxation format under the upcoming goods and services tax (GST) is likely to fuel inflation, and increase the tax burden of secondhand car buyers and those opting for exchange offers. It may also increase the working capital of dealers of used vehicles. Earlier the tax used to be calculated on the discounted value of a product in the case of exchange schemes after the market value of the old vehicle was deducted in tax consultancy firms in Delhi. The proposed GST rules, issued by the government on Sunday, will consider the market value of the new vehicle while calculating the tax burden. Thus, consumers may end up paying more as the discounted amount would be taxed. Under the new GST rules, retailers and traders dealing in used vehicles will come under taxation. While under the existing rules, secondhand products are outside the purview of tax, sellers will have to pay taxes at the same rate as the new products in indirect taxation in India.

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Now, Apple INC,s iphone Plans in India Hit GST

“GST is still evolving. See, what they (Apple) are asking for is, make it profitable for us to manufacture here and therefore give us a favourable duty regime. Exactly how favourable it should be is something that needs to be ironed out. But the first thing is what will be the manner in which this would be reflected in the new GST regime, (firmed up by) the GST Council,” Sundarajan said.
Sundarajan added: “So only once the council decides how the existing trade regime is going to get translated into the new one and how domestic manufacturing incentives are going to get reflected in GST can a decision on Apple’s demands can be taken.”
Most existing indirect taxes including excise duty, state value-added tax, service tax and countervailing duties on imports will be subsumed in GST.
Most tax exemptions are set to be abolished in the GST regime in tax consultant in India.

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New Tax Norms Target Shell Firms

The government on Tuesday issued guidelines to plug tax evasion by shell companies or foreign firms set by groups in India to retain income outside the country, dashing hopes of industry. The rules outline companies incorporated overseas but with effective control of that implementation of these norms would be deferred to next year.The rules will affect companies in industries like pharmaceuticals, automobiles, energy, manufacturing and software. The guidelines have a few safeguards that were not present in draft norms issued in 2015 such as a collegium of officers to vet whether companies are to be taxed on the basis of their place of effective management (POEM) and test of active business. However, experts warned even then there could be subjectivity in establishing Poem. Business and majority ofboard meeting in India will be considered a tax resident. The rules will not apply to companies with a turnover or gross receipts of ~50 crore or less in a financial year. “The intent is to target shell companies and accounting outsourcing companies in India created for retaining income outside India although real control and management of affairs is located in India,” the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said in a release. The rules will come into effect from assessment year 2017-18, which essentially means the current financial year. Tax consultancy firms in Delhi pitched for a deferment raising compliance concerns because the rules were issued in the tenth month of the financial year.

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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.

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Key Highlights of Budget 2017?

This is the first time in Indian history that Union Budget has been announced one month in advance. This decision is made to complete the legislative process for approval of annual spending plans and tax proposals in chartered accountant firms in mumbai before beginning of the new financial year on April 1.

	-Govt. proposes levy of surcharge of 10% for income between Rs. 50 lakhs and Rs. 1 crores
	-FM proposed no change in Exemption limit but reduces tax rate to 5% for income between 2.5 lac to 5 lacs
	-Threshold limit for audit of entities opting for presumptive indirect taxation in India under Section 44AD is increased to 2 crores. For more information visit at: http://bit.ly/2oDQOqi

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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Threshold Limit on ESI Increases to Rs. 21,000

As per notification issued by Ministry of Labour and Employment dt. 22nd December, 2016, in exercise of the powers conferred by section 95 of the Employees’ State Insurance Act, 1948, the Central Government, after consultation with the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation, hereby makes the following rules further to amend the Employees’ State Insurance (Central) Rules, 1950, namely:- 1. (1) These rules may be called the Employees’ State Insurance (Central) Third Amendment Rules, 2016. (2) They shall come into force from 1st day of January, 2017. 2. In the Employees’ State Insurance (Central) Rules, 1950, in rule 50, for the words “fifteen thousand rupees” occurring at both the places, the words ‘twenty one thousand rupees” shall be substituted in chartered accountant firms in mumbai.
In simple words, lower rate of contributions (3% instead of 4.75% for employers and 1% instead of 1.75% for employees) will apply in areas where the Act is implemented for the first time in Tax consultancy firms in India.
The increase in wage cap will augment the burden on employers as they have to pay 4.75% of an employee’s salary as ESI contribution every month (Rule 51 of the Rules). A benevolent amendment indeed for the employees; however the far reaching effect & impact thereof will be seen in times to come.
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Tax Experts Hope Goods and Services Tax Will Pep up GDP growth by 2%

Tax experts on Sunday said there will be a uniform andone-nation-one-tax in the form of Goods and Services Tax(GST) proposed from April 1. The experts guided CAs on GST during a regional tax conference held here jointly by the Nashik and Jalgaon branches of TheInstitute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).
Bimal Jain, chairman, Indirect Tax Committee of PHD Chamber of Commerce, said, “The present indirect taxes in India have driven business to structure and model their supply chain and systems owning to multiplicity of taxes and costs involved therein. GST will be a big game changing reform for Indian economy by developing a common Indian market and reducing the cascading effect of taxes on the cost of goods and services.” tax consultancy firms in Delhi
He added, “GST has broad-based implications, affecting the entire organisation regardless of the size and nature of the business. There will be uniform tax structure across the country based on the one-tax-one-nation formula. Currently, the total taxes on supply of goods in the country are around 27%. But the standard tax rate of GST will be 18%.” Indirect taxation in India

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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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Ordinance Likely To Amend Payment Of Wages.

A mid currency crunch, the government is mulling over bringing in an ordinance to amend the payment of wages Act for allowing business and industrial establishments to pay salaries through Cheques or by electronic modes.
“The government may bring an ordinance to amend Payment of Wage Act, 1936, to nudge employers of certain industries to make payment through electronic modes and cheques,” a source said Direct foreign investment in India.
The source further said, “The bill for the purpose was tabled in the Lok Sabha on December 15, 2016. It can be pushed for passage in the Budget session next year. Thus, instead of waiting for two more months, the government can issue the ordinance and later it will be passed in Parliament.” Standard practice is, government brings ordinance to amend laws for immediate implementation of new rules. An ordinance is valid for six months only. Government is required to get it passed in Parliament within that period in accounting outsourcing companies in India.
The Payment of Wages (Amendment) Bill, 2016, seeks to amend Section 6 of the principal Act to enable employers pay wages to their employees through cheques or by crediting it to their bank accounts electronically. The Bill was introduced by Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya amid din over demonetisation issue.
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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.

“2016 has been historic, with all three tax treaties amended… The treaties were misused to round-trip domestic black money and bring it back to India through these routes. 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. That from Singapore is USD 45.8 bn The concessional rate of 50 per cent would be subject to fulfilment of conditions of Limitation of Benefit (LOB), an expenditure of at least Rs. 50 lakh in Singapore in the previous financial year. It is Rs.27 lakh in the case of Mauritius.

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It Ministry Telcos For Cashless Action Plan

The latter has also asked the telecom companies to urgently improve their infrastructure, as the government aims to digitise a host of services. The ministry’s biggest concern at present is the connectivity issue. “Telecom companies have to reach the interiors, so that we are able to start digital services in rural areas. Point-of-sale machines, mobile wallets and UPI (United Payments Interface) would only work if there’s connectivity. The government has also asked (state-owned) BSNL for rapid expansion of its network,” added the official in Direct foreign investment in India.

The measures announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to encourage online transactions, including discounts on petrol and diesel purchase, have reinforced the optimism at digital cash companies.
While they all expect more clarity on the announcements made in the days to come, they say the recent measures, if bundled well into digital transactions, would help massively in promoting digital money in both urban and rural areas in indirect taxation in India

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Authorized persons to exchange Old Notes Held by foreigners up to Rs 5,000 Till Dec 15,

Attention of Authorized Persons is invited to the A.P. (DIR Series) Circular No. 16 dated November 9, 2016 giving certain exemptions to foreign tourists visiting India. In super session of instructions issued therein, it has been decided that foreign citizens (i.e. foreign passport holders) can exchange foreign exchange for Indian currency notes up to a limit of Rs. 5000/- per week till December 15, 2016 subject to the tenderer submitting a self-declaration that this facility has not been availed of during the week in accounting outsourcing companies in India. The Authorized Person shall keep the passport details and the above declaration on record. Authorized Person may also ensure that the total value of such exchange to Indian currency notes does not exceed Rs. 5000/- during the week.
2. The Instruction in respect of issue of prepaid instruments by Authorized Dealer Category I Bank shall continue in indirect taxation in India.
3. Authorised Persons may follow the above instructions and bring the contents of this circular to the notice of their constituents.
4. The directions contained in this circular have been issued under section 10(4) and section 11(1) of the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (42 of 1999) and are without prejudice to permissions/approvals, if any, required under any other law.

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