Indians with undisclosed foreign assets and offshore bank accounts will be in for a shock this Budget if the finance ministry clears a proposal empowering income tax authorities to reopen assessments up to 16 years as against 6 years now.  The proposed amendment, the ministry feels, may not only act as a deterrent, but also put pressure on people to declare their wealth stashed away in Swiss banks and tax havens.  In...

-The Hindustan Times The government is pushing for making it mandatory for recipients of funds from abroad to clearly identify themselves. The reason: intelligence agencies caution that some small money transmission agents are funneling funds for terror activities. As recording all recipients’ photographs has been found cumbersome, the authorities, on the RBI’s advice, may demand Aadhar unique ID numbers — after the numbers are made available — even from individuals receiving less than...

-The Indian Express   Pranab Mukherjee should use his waking hours to signal bold reforms Until a few years ago no one really thought that governments could go bust. But the deepening sovereign debt crises of Europe have now persuaded us that governments can go bust if their debt levels cross a certain danger mark. What is that danger mark remains a matter of research by economists around the world. Some studies have concluded...

It is getting harder for jobseekers to return to gainful employment and for new entrants to find adequate jobs, says the ILO. THERE is little in the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) annual projection of job growth to cheer about. The year 2012 has been described as a year of stark reality. A third of the global workforce is currently unemployed or poor; that is, 200 million members of the 3.3-billion-strong global...

The India-EU summit scheduled in New Delhi next week will lay down a 'strict' road-map for conclusion of the ambitious bilateral free trade pact and also strengthen cooperation in security. Commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma briefed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday on the progress made in the FTA negotiations and the areas that still need to be sorted out.  "The PM was briefed on the status of the India-EU...