TRACKPAD

FM launches “e-Sahyog” pilot project of IT Department

To give boost to the Digital India initiative of the government and provide better services to the tax payers via e-governance, the Income Tax Department has launched “e-Sahyog” project that will facilitate income tax payers. The pilot project has been launched by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, which furthers the department’s commitment to work in an e-environment and reduces the need for the taxpayer to physically appear before tax authorities. The “e-Sahyog” project launched on a pilot basis is aimed at reducing compliance cost, especially for small taxpayers. It will provide an online mechanism to resolve mismatches in income tax returns of those assesses, whose returns have been selected for scrutiny, without visiting the Income Tax Office.

The IT Department will provide an end to end e-service using SMS, e-mails to inform the tax assesses of the mismatch. The tax payers will simply need to visit the e-filing portal and log in with their user-ID and password to view mismatch-related information and submit online response on the issue. The responses submitted online by the taxpayers will be processed and if the response and other information are found satisfactory as per automated closure rules, the issue will be treated as closed. The tax payers can check the updated status by logging in to the e-filing portal. FM also inaugurated a drive to provide public service at peoples’ doorstep by holding “special PAN camps in remote areas”.

The government has constituted a committee under the chairmanship of Justice R.V. Easwar, (Retd.), former Judge, Delhi High Court and former President, ITAT that will suggest about the changes to be brought in to simplify the provisions of the Income Tax Act. There are 10 other members in the committee. The overall objectives of committee are to study and identify the provisions of the Act which are leading to litigation due to different interpretations as well as to study and identify the provisions which are impacting the ease of doing business. It will also suggest alternatives and modifications to the existing provisions and areas so identified to bring about predictability and certainty in tax laws, without substantial impact on the tax base and revenue collection.

As far as modus operandi is concerned, the committee will put its draft recommendations in the public domain and after stakeholder consultations, the committee will formalize its recommendations. The committee can give its recommendations in batches. The first batch of recommendations will be submitted by January 31, 2016.

Just to give clarity over the long standing issue relating to levy of Service Tax on sale of flats and dwellings, etc. after issue of occupancy certificate but before issue of completion certificate in areas under the jurisdiction of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (BMC), it has clarified that no Service Tax is payable on such cases. Service Tax authorities have conveyed that sale of flats and dwellings, where the entire consideration is received after issue of occupancy certificate by BMC that leads to mere transfer of title in immovable property, falls outside the definition of “Service” provided in Section 65B (44) of the Finance Act, 1994; so no Service Tax will be payable on such property transactions.
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Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecom operator by subscribers is looking at increasing its capital expenditure by Rs1,300-2,600 crore in the current financial year. It had already planned for Rs19,506 crore initially.In an analyst call post its Q2 result Bharti Airtel’s India Chief Executive Officer, Gopal Vittal, said: “Capital expenditure could be higher by USD 200-400 million this year than the USD 3 billion we guided for earlier this year.” The company is looking at an exhaustive coverage of 3G and 4G across the country. At the end of the second quarter, it had a total of 62,000 3G sites, which it could double by the end of FY16. The investment is not only to drive data revenue, but also to unclog 2G networks, where its spectrum has reduced, as in Delhi. This is a positive development for the company and shareholders as it is indicative of the telecom player’s intent to protect the market share it has garnered with the high-decibel launch of its 4G services in August.

Wipro won a five-year IT contract from Coop Norge Handel AS (Coop Norge), a leading retailer in Norway. Under the agreement, Wipro will transform Coop Norge’s enterprise SAP software landscape and upgrade the company’s data centre infrastructure, geared towards achieving superior performance. This IT engagement will benefit supply chain and distribution operations at the Norwegian retailer, among other functions. It will enable Coop Norge to strengthen its move towards a more efficient operating model with increased reach and availability. Coop Norge has a market share of 33 per cent with over 1,500 stores in Norway.

MUDRA (Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency) has sanctioned a refinance line of Rs100 crore at 10 per cent per annum to SKS Microfinance. . This is lower than their current average funding cost of 11.9 per cent. MUDRA was launched by the Government of India for financing micro entrepreneurs engaged in small business activities like manufacturing, processing, service sector and trade.This is the first refinance limit sanctioned to SKS Microfinance by MUDRA. The development is expected to contribute to bringing down the cost of interest-bearing liabilities at SKS Microfinance.Indeed, our initial next-day predication has very low accuracy around 50%. However, as we tried to predict long-term stock price trend, our models achieved a high accuracy (79%). Based on our prediction result, we built a trading strategy on the stock, which significantly outran the stock performance itself.