Big taxpayers yet to take benefits of Sabka Vishwas amnesty scheme

Current Affairs
As many as 87.5 per cent of the eligible taxpayers have taken advantage of Sabka Vishwas, a dispute resolution-cum-amnesty scheme, which has been extended till January 15.
However, the large taxpayers who are almost 12.5 per cent of the total eligible taxpayers with total tax amount of Rs 1.7 trillion under litigation has yet to make declaration under this scheme.
According to sources, the government is unlikely to further extend the scheme which went live on September 1, 2019. The sources said till now, 161,214 taxpayers (87.5 per cent) out of the total 184,000 eligible taxpayers have already availed the scheme.
These taxpayers have declared tax dues of around Rs 79,968 crore and after availing the various reliefs and amnesty as per the rules of the scheme, they would pay around Rs 35,094 crore, sources said.

However, only 23,000 (about 12.5 per cent of the total) eligible taxpayers have not yet applied under the scheme while the vast majority of the smaller taxpayers have already opted for the scheme. The sources said its officers are pursuing taxpayers to avail this scheme before January 15 as it would not be extend further.....Read More

Homeowners in India roll up sleeves to complete their unfinished flats

Company News

Lalit Vazirani, a computer programmer from Mumbai, never reckoned on having to turn amateur property developer.

Yet here he is, a decade after putting down a deposit for an apartment near the city's airport, dealing with architects, taxes, various planning permissions and even court hearings. All because the developer behind the $50 million project has gone bust, and nobody else has stepped in to finish the work.

"We never in our wildest dreams imagined one day we would take on the functions and the role of a developer,” said Vazirani, 45, who bought the two-bedroom unit before construction started. “But fate had other plans.”

Few things illustrate the malaise in India’s property market as starkly as would-be homeowners having to dedicate untold hours to completing the flats they spent years saving up for. While no estimates exist for the number of people in Vazirani’s position, India’s property market is struggling to digest some $65 billion worth of projects in various stages of completion -- or, in many cases, non-completion.

It’s an issue with the potential to sap confidence among house buyers, further complicating developers’ attempts to claw their way out from under a mountain of debt.

Weakened Faith

So many delayed building projects have “severely weakened faith in any under-construction properties and reviving buyers’ trust is a Herculean task,” said Anuj Puri, the chairman of Anarock Property Consultants Pvt. “If buyers stop purchasing, builders will have a far more challenging time to get funds from external sources for construction.”

 Two years ago, India introduced a law with strict punishments for building delays...Read More

File your I-T return on time or you may end up in jail like this jeweller

Company News

If you have received a notice for not filing income tax returns within due date, you might want to pay heed to it. In what could probably be the first such instance, a director of Mumbai-based firm Ms Shah Time and Jewels was sentenced to jail for three months on Wednesday for not filing income tax returns within the due date for the assessment year 2014-15, according to The Times of India.

When repeated notices sent to the firm and its director Paresh C Shah did not elicit any response, the deputy commissioner of Income Tax on November 22, 2017, filed a show cause notice seeking an explanation as to why sanction for their provision should not be given under the Income Tax Act. After that also went unanswered, a complaint was filed against Shah and the firm.

The Ballard Pier magistrate court rejected Shah's defence of 'lack of knowledge' and held him and the firm guilty of deliberate non-compliance. The court observed that imprisonment under the Income Tax Act was an exceptional and extreme move and was given only when it established deliberate failure to file returns."In the present case, the accused received the notice, but no explanation was given despite repeatedly serving the notices," additional chief metropolitan magistrate R S Sarkale told TOI. He further said that the explanation given by the director was "not at all acceptable."

The maximum sentence over failure to file I-T returns is two years imprisonment. However, since Ms Shah Time and Jewels did not have a poor history in filing returns, Shah was given a minimum jail-term of three months.

Filing Income Tax returns


 It is mandatory for all registered taxpayers to file income tax returns every year, except for those who are over 80 years of age and do not have any source of income from a business or profession.