THE Income Tax Department is going through a churning process. The under-currents of the process of change in mindset have become a little more visible with field formations giving their unadulterated views to the Board on the issue of 'Vision 2020' and 'Citizens' Charter'. TIOL is witness to the hitherto latent process of change which now looks for some competent change managers ... Read Column

CESS and surcharges have become synonymous with the reforms. Whenever there is talk of reforms, the idea of levying a special cess to fund the reforms crops up. And the cess proposals gain acceleration in the few months preceding the Union or State budgets. The situation in the current year is no different. The Finance Ministry has to be, however, on the guard as it is pilot major tax reforms through direct tax code and goods service tax (GST). The Law Ministry's draft judicial reforms blueprint reportedly moots legal reforms cess to raise funds for clearing three crore of pending cases. The cess would be pattern on the lines of education cess. The latter was introduced as 2% cess on all central taxes to fund primary education in the 2004-05 budget ... Read Column

REMEMBER the confusing "value addition" based; refund based; area based; exemption Notifications? Have a look at DDT 835 31.03.2008. There are eight Central Excise notifications pertaining to various regions like North east, J&K etc,. The exemption works by a complicated system of refund of "the duty payable on value addition undertaken in the manufacture of the said goods by the said unit". In effect, ... Read Column

RECENTLY, I accompanied my friend to her slimming spa. Being a 'person' (I mean a natural human-being and not as defined in the General Clauses Act, 1897) working in the field of indirect taxes, I tried to search the term 'Service tax' on the price card of the slimming spa as Service tax was introduced on 'Health and fitness service' w.e.f. 16 th August 2002. But to my surprise, nothing was mentioned. When enquired, the receptionist informed me that they provide Therapeutic massage for weight loss and hence excluded from the purview of service tax. Whilst my friend was convinced with receptionists' answer ... Read Column

OBAMA has not let down Joes ever since he took over as the President of the US. In the State of Union speech, Obama unveiled numerous tax proposals to generate employment. In contrast, let's talk about the draft National Employment Policy (NEP) that UPA Government unveiled in its first tenure in August 2008. It had called for reworking ... Read Column

By Dr P Sree Sudha

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"JUSTICE in India should be simple, speedy and cheap," the country's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had said in 1955. That largely remains a pipedream over five decades later. Today, the Indian Republic has lived 60 years of independence. We, the people of India, gave ourselves the Constitution with a promise to secure to all its citizens Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. In 'Justice' the framers of the Constitution included social, economic and political justice. The doors of the court are open to all but that by itself is not justice so long as the weakest of the weak is not empowered enough to have access to justice. The core of the commitment of ...
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By S Sivakumar

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THE exporting community needs to profusely thank the CBEC for issuing Circular No. 120/1/2010-ST dated January 19, 2010 which aims at simplifying the process involved in the disbursement of refund of excess cenvat credit. The fact that the Board has had to come out with this kind of a circular, despite having issued numerous earlier circulars ...
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