-The Hindu The Finance Minister must move to an expansionary fiscal stance that prioritises job creation, public service provision It is that time of year in India, when all eyes and ears turn to the Finance Minister to learn what she will unveil in the annual Union Budget. But it is a moot point whether, even in a year of the novel coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis, that speech will be of...

-NetworkIdeas.org India’s Constitution puts the bulk of responsibility for the basic goods and services to be provided to citizens on to state governments. That is also why it mandated that independent Finance Commissions be appointed every five years to determine the distribution of tax revenues between Centre and the various states. Successive Finance Commissions (FCs) have also recognised that state governments necessarily require more resources to fulfil their obligations, which is...

-The Hindu Data being pooled to track evasion, says Finance Secretary. Tightening the noose around fraudsters rigging the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, the government has roped in the Income tax department to tap illicit incomes as part of a crackdown against 7,000 fraud companies, identified using data analytics tools, Finance Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey told The Hindu. Any income traceable to the use of fake bills and other GST frauds shall...

-The Hindu Compensation for last fiscal paid to States using previous years’ balance of cess The Centre made up a 42% shortfall in Goods and Services Tax compensation cess collection in 2019-20 by using balance of cess from previous years, plus a transfer from the Consolidated Fund of India. Meanwhile, the GST Council, which was slated to meet this month to discuss the possibility of market borrowing to meet likely future shortfalls,...

-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...