KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

-The Hindu Nationalism is not going to solve the big problems, says the economist. If the catastrophic human toll of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic was the first wave to strike the world this year, its severe economic consequences – including loss of livelihoods of the poor across countries, leading to massive internal displacement and starvation in many cases – have been the second wave. It is in this context that the seminal work...

-Newsclick.in This bounty for corporate houses comes at a time when common people are reeling under a slowdown, joblessness is at record levels and incomes are stagnating. Continuing her series of press conferences, that are becoming like a treasure hunt for corporates, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced today that corporate tax rates will be slashed from the current 30% (average) to 25.17% including all cess/surcharge. Actually, if no other concession is availed...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee expressed concern over unabated regularisation of unauthorised colonies in Delhi by the authorities in violation of law for political gains and pleaded the court to intervene to stop it to prevent a chaotic situation in the capital. It also accused the Land and Development Office (L&DO) for encouraging encroachment of public land. Referring to media reports, the committee said the Delhi...

-The Indian Express The Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) was signed between India and Mauritius in 1982. Under this, any entity could apply for tax residency and pay zero Capital Gains Tax. This became the principal reason why Mauritius emerged as a top channel for investments being routed into India. After Swiss Leaks, Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, come documents from Mauritius — over 200,000 emails, contracts and bank statements that...