-The Indian Express As countries calibrate their response to competing demands for sovereignty to tax, DST is an interim alternative outside tax treaties. It possesses the advantage of taxing incomes that currently escape tax and creates space to negotiate a final, overarching solution to this conundrum. The taxation of digital companies has been a key concern for G20 countries. The agenda to reform international tax law so that digital companies are taxed...

-The Hindu There is a strong case to attribute a more robust responsibility to platform companies and the State The Code on Social Security Bill, 2020, for the first time in Indian law, attempted to define ‘platform work’ outside of the traditional employment category. It says: “Platform work means a work arrangement outside of a traditional employer-employee relationship in which organisations or individuals use an online platform to access other organisations or...

-The Indian Express Bihar has about 75,000 government schools with about three crore students. Nayagaon (Begusarai): Nishu Kumari, a Class IX student at a government-run school, is studying with her brother Nirbhay, a Class VII student and cousin Arpit, a Class I student. Their grandfather Bhagirath Singh is keeping a watch on them as the three have to finish their homework before private tutor Subodh Singh arrives. Nishu’s father Shivjyoti Kumar, a farmer,...

-The Indian Express Covid-related crisis offers NDA government opportunity to increase work days, entitlements under the employment guarantee scheme. In a recent article (‘Credit where it isn’t due’, IE, June 10), Union Minister for Rural Development Narendra Singh Tomar described the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) as a “failing scheme” before 2014. MGNREGA under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was by no means perfect, but when the National...

A recent survey conducted by National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) -- a Delhi-based non-profit organisation -- shows how persons with disabilities in the country were disproportionately affected by the COVID–19 crisis. The report by NCPEDP has observed that persons with disabilities, particularly those from economically deprived sections, went through severe hardship during the lockdown. Without sufficient access to food or money, many of them faced hunger...