-Macroscan.com In his speech introducing the 2012-13 budget, the then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had declared his intention to introduce a General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR) to counter ''aggressive tax avoidance schemes''. What GAAR means is that even if a transaction appears to be legally valid, if it is entered into for the sole purpose of tax avoidance, then the Indian tax authorities can deny tax benefit to the concerned entity. GAAR...

-The Indian Express The Income-Tax department is set to cancel the registration of yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s trust as a charitable organisation and withdraw all exemptions provided to it. This follows a final order passed on August 24 by the Income-Tax (exemption) unit in the case of his principal charitable organisation, the Patanjali Yogpeeth Trust, for the year 2009-10, after a scrutiny revealed that it was involved in a host of...

-The Hindu Most people remain at the mercy of a venal administration that, encouraged by the absence of an independent watchdog, exploits them relentlessly   The state of affairs in the country is characterised by rampant corruption at all levels leading to a breakdown in the rule of law and lack of accountability all around. One can say that there is a complete collapse of governance in the country. Something drastic needs to...

-The Telegraph The Supreme Court today appeared to be considering whether to lay down norms for court reporting that, if violated, would cost a journalist the right to cover court cases. The idea came from senior counsel K.K. Venugopal, who has been pushing for media curbs, and seemed to find favour with Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia. Venugopal suggested that journalists wishing to cover the courts be made to apply for formal...

Drug smugglers and third-world dictators laundering ill-gotten wealth through secretive banking systems in tax havens is an anachronistic image from crime novels. Leveraging US' remarkable success in compelling tax havens to block terrorist financing, the G20/OECD have successfully persuaded tax havens to improve tax transparency and participate in an international regime of information exchange.  All tax havens have committed to OECD standards for tax transparency and are executing Tax Information Exchange...