-The Hindu Council leaves the 5% tax levied on vaccines unchanged. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council on Saturday decided to waive the tax levied on two critical drugs against COVID-19 and mucormycosis — tocilizumab and amphotericin B — and reset the tax rate to 5% for 14 major pandemic relief items, till September 30. Non-BJP-ruled States registered a strong dissent, terming the continued imposition of GST on critical COVID supplies and...
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FCRA rules hit overseas COVID aid to hospitals, NGOs -Vikas Dhoot
-The Hindu FCRA approvals take a lot of time, the government needs to urgently grant an exemption for all such donations, tax and legal experts said. Indian entities, including hospitals and charitable trusts, hoping to receive COVID-19 relief material from overseas individual donors or donor agencies, could be in trouble, unless they are registered under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) with a stated objective involving provision of medical care. On May 3,...
More »Vaccines bought first using PM CARES funds cost Centre more -Priscilla Jebaraj and Jacob Koshy
-The Hindu Current price negotiated through bulk orders may not be replicable: Finance Secy The first lot of vaccines were procured by the Centre using PM CARES funds at a higher rate than the subsequent rounds paid for by budgetary allocations, The Hindu has learnt from the response to a Right to Information request by a transparency activist. The Health Ministry response said that the initial 5.6 crore doses of Covishield were bought...
More »GST mop-up hits a record in March -Vikas Dhoot
-The Hindu The indirect tax collections were 27% higher than that in March 2020. The gross GST collections in March hit a record of ₹1,23,902 crore, the Union Finance Ministry said on Thursday. This is the sixth month in a row that GST revenues have remained above ₹1 lakh crore. “The GST collections for March have created a record; it has never been so high. We have crossed the record collections by a...
More »Tax exemptions and incentives for the corporate sector continue despite reduction in corporate tax rates
Quite often it is argued by mainstream economists that a sizeable chunk of the Union Budget every year is wasted because the Government spends that on food and fertiliser subsidies. The burgeoning size of these two subsidies relative to the entire budget as well as the gross domestic product (GDP) is often used to build the argument that economic as well as environmental sustainability of the country is at stake...
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