-Scroll.in The finance ministry has directed the CBDT chairperson to seek an explanation from these officers for writing such ‘ill-conceived views’ in public. The Centre on Sunday rejected a proposal made by officials of the Indian Revenue Service suggesting the government should increase taxes to cushion the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. The Centre called it “an act of indiscipline”, NDTV reported. In a 44-page report titled FORCE, or Fiscal Options and...

-PTI/ The Hindu “While the ITBA platform is not available to the officers for discharging statutory functions, it is still possible to follow up the pending collection matters by contacting large taxpayers telephonically/electronically,” IT Commissioner said. A three-month extension in deadlines for tax payment and filing of returns notwithstanding, the Income-Tax Department has asked field formations to contact large taxpayers over phone or email to follow up on pending collections. Rakesh Gupta, Commissioner...

-Decoding the Priorities: An Analysis of Union Budget 2020-21, Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), February 2020 The publication presents an analysis of the priorities in Union Budget 2020-21, both on public expenditure and resource mobilisation front. It has been divided broadly into five chapters. The first chapter focuses on a host of important aspects under Resource Mobilisation, like domestic tax policy, international taxation policy, financial transparency, and Centre-State...

-The Indian Express There are many things that the government can do to improve ease of doing business for kisan and industry. The budget season is upon us, with a flurry of submissions being made to the finance minister from all quarters. The budget itself could result in a fine-tuning of tax rates and allocation adjustments against various expenditure heads/ministries. There are implications from these for all sectors. And no less...

-Hindustan Times The suggestion is to come up with a standard rate of 17%, a lower merit rate for items of common consumption and a higher rate on luxury and sin goods, according to these officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The Fifteenth Finance Commission (FFC) has suggested the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council to simplify tax rates by creating just three slabs, two officials with direct knowledge of...