-TheWire.in Despite government press releases, as of August 2017, there doesn’t appear to have been a substantial increase in the number of new tax payers or direct tax collection as a result of demonetisation. On the morning of August 8, most of our newspapers – both national as well as regional ones – ran headlines about the giant leap in the income tax returns received as well as the increase in advance...

-The Hindu Concern over security features and embedded programmes of handsets; motivated by Data leakage to other countries Concerned about instances of Indian mobile phone users’ contact lists, details and text messages being leaked to other countries, including China, the government has asked all firms selling smartphone handsets in the country to share details of the processes they follow to ensure there is no possibility of Data thefts or leakages from their...

-Scroll.in The prime minister’s Independence Day speech was more of a laundry list of achievements, with few new announcements. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on Tuesday was not only his shortest Independence Day address so far, it also had little by way of major announcements. Aside from a few one-liners calling for Indians to change their attitudes and for a different approach to Kashmir, Modi’s annual speech from the Red Fort...

-BoomLive.in In a press release dated August 7, 2017, The Central Board of Direct Taxes claimed that there has been a ‘substantial’ increase in the number of tax returns filed this year ( April 1 – Aug 5, 2017 ) on account of demonetisation. These first sentences from the CBDT press release are important and we will put them under a microscopic scrutiny in the next few paragraphs.     As a result of...

-Scroll.in The Economic Survey stated that long term benefits of the exercise are yet to materialise. It is now over nine months since the government suddenly withdraw 86% of India’s currency in November but India’s Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian remains unsure if this note ban or demonetisation actually helped any sector of the Indian economy, the latest volume of Economic Survey tabled in Parliament on Friday suggests. The Chief Economic Advisor...