UP govt to crack down on tax evasion, eyes over Rs 1.4-trn revenue in FY20

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Uttar Pradesh government will crack down on Goods and Services Tax (GST) evaders to improve its tax and non-tax revenue collection.
The state is targetting a tax mop-up of Rs 1.4 trillion in the current financial year, 4.4 per cent higher than the revised budgetary estimates of Rs 1.34 trillion in 2018-19.Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has asked the commercial tax department to employ technology tools to identify tax evaders for taking action. In a review meeting held in Lucknow recently, he underlined that UP was the largest consumer state and, as such, it should top the GST collection tally as well.
He directed the state taxman to take "effective steps" to improve the state tax collection by rooting out chronic tax evasion, and noted that a bigger GST kitty would boost state revenues and provide greater leverage to the government to invest in public welfare schemes.
During April-July 2019, UP tax revenue, comprising GST, Value Added Tax (VAT), excise, stamp and registration, transport, energy and land revenue heads, stood at Rs 41,202 crore. Similarly, the state clocked a non-tax revenue of Rs 1,982 crore during the first 4 months of the current financial year under the heads of mining, minerals, irrigation, forest and wildlife, police, public works department (PWD), housing, and employment, etc.

Adityanath also exhorted the excise department to pull up its socks for posting higher excise revenue in the current financial year. Meanwhile, the CM directed the transport department to develop bus terminals on the pattern of airports, so that they could be harnessed for commercial use and to boost income.During 2019-20, UP has projected total revenue receipts of more than Rs 3.91 trillion, including tax and non-tax revenue, both emanating from state collection and its share from the tax and non-tax revenue of the Centre...Read More

Tax evasion may derail India's fiscal deficit goal as demand wanes

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India’s slowing economy could easily be the fall guy for Prime Minister Narendra Modi government’s struggles with meeting tax targets. But there’s another culprit: tax evasion.A nationwide consumption tax, introduced in 2017 and widely regarded as a tool to improve tax compliance and boost economic growth, may have failed to plug evasion, according to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, the auditor of government accounts. The number of Goods and Services Tax returns filed have declined, it showed.
Poorer tax compliance adds to the government’s revenue collection woes amid a broader slowdown in the economy, where demand for everything from cookies to cars has taken a knock. Consumption, which contributes almost 60 per cent to India’s gross domestic product, has been largely hurt by a shadow banking crisis, which in turn has dragged growth down to a five-year low.
The consumption tax was expected to bring in an anti-evasive tax regime, but there are numerous cases of bogus billings, tax evasion and fake invoicing, according to tax consultancy and auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. “I wouldn’t expect this kind of reform and tax regime to become stable quickly,” Pratik Jain, a partner at PwC India, said.
The government’s total tax revenue in the last financial year ended March fell short of target by Rs 1.7 trillion ($24 billion), according to provisional numbers. That’s due in part to GST collection trailing monthly target for most of the year.A revenue miss again will put the fiscal deficit goal of 3.3 per cent of GDP at risk, and limit the government’s ability to spend on infrastructure and welfare programs.

The finance ministry expected GST to help boost GDP growth by as much as two percentage points...Read More

Walmart International Q2 operating income declines 29.6% due to Flipkart

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Walmart International, the segment which consists of the retail giant’s operations outside US including retail websites, on Thursday posted 29.6 per cent decline in operational income on a reported basis and 27.3 per cent decline in constant currency, primarily due to Indian e-commerce firm Flipkart.
The Bentonville-based company (in Arkansas) is locked in a battle with US rival Amazon for dominance in India’s online retail market through Flipkart, which it acquired for $16 billion last year in May.
“Walmart International continued to make progress on managing costs and delivered 36 basis points of expense leverage in the quarter. However, operating income declined 27.3 percent in constant currency and 29.6 percent on a reported basis due primarily to the expected dilution from Flipkart as well as the overall gross margin pressure,” said Brett Biggs, executive vice-president and chief financial officer of Walmart Inc.
In May, Walmart had said its reported international operating income in the Q1 declined 41.7 per cent and went down 37.5 per cent in constant-currency terms was on account of Flipkart.
Doug McMillon, president and chief executive, Walmart Inc., said the ecosystem the company is building through Flipkart is impressive and comprises strong businesses. For example, he said Myntra, a leading online fashion destination, recently concluded their largest sale event of the year – the End of Reason sale – where more than two million customers shopped during the four-day period with 7,000 plus orders per minute at peak.

To help fulfill these orders, the Flipkart team partnered with almost 11,000 local Kirana stores to support last mile delivery, said McMillon. This Kirana partner network helped deliver approximately 70 percent of the 8.5 million packages that were fulfilled during the event, he said...Read More

ShareChat raises $100 million in Series D funding led by Twitter

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ShareChat, a regional social media platform, on Friday announced that it had raised a new round of funding of $100 million in its Series-D funding, where Twitter and TrustBridge Partners are two new investors.
To date, ShareChat has raised $224 million. Existing investors participating in this round include Shunwei Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SAIF Capital, India Quotient and Morningside Venture Capital.
This new round of funding will help ShareChat strengthen the technology infrastructure for its platform as the company looks to scale its business. Additionally, ShareChat will acquire talent to help propel the exchange of ideas among its strategic partners. To accelerate the internet ecosystem in India, the company will also be introducing more features to make the experience seamless across devices.
“This is a very exciting time for us at ShareChat as we see our platform growing rapidly. With this new round of funding, we are positioned to take the next leap in our growth story. As we scale up, our focus remains to help the ShareChat community better express themselves in the comfort of their native language,” Ankush Sachdeva, CEO, ShareChat ​said.
Manish Maheshwari, Managing Director of Twitter India said that Twitter and ShareChat are aligned on the broader purpose of serving the public conversation, helping the world learn faster and solve common challenges. This investment will help ShareChat grow and provide the company’s management team access to Twitter’s executives as thought partners, he added.

“Lightspeed is excited to continue to support ShareChat in every financing round – Series A through the current Series D, and beyond...Read More

Hero MotoCorp shuts plants from Aug 15-18, says market situation to blame

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India's largest two-wheeler maker, Hero MotoCorp has decided to close its manufacturing facilities for three days. The reasons stated are annual holiday and due to the prevailing market condition. After car makers announced plant closures for a few days, Hero will be the first two-wheeler maker to officially announce a temporary stop in production.
The company stated that production planning is a matter of advance monitoring of market dynamics and prudent demand forecasting. This helps us to plan our production well in advance, thereby enabling us to stay flexible, both in terms of volumes and production schedules, it said."In line with this trend, our manufacturing facilities will be closed from August 15 to 18. While this has been part of the annual holiday calendar on account of Independence Day, Raksha Bandhan and the weekend, it also partly reflects the prevailing market demand scenario," said the company in an announcement to the NSE.
Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) has already announced the closure of its plants for 8-14 days in July-September. Similarly, Tata Motors has announced closure for eight days, Maruti Suzuki for three days, Toyota Kirloskar also for eight days, Ashok Leyland for nine days, Bosch for 10 days, Jamna Auto for 20, and Wabco for 19, according to reports.
While Hero MotoCorp has five plants in India, the construction of its sixth manufacturing facility, at Sricity in Andhra Pradesh's Chittoor district, has reached an advanced stage. It will have an annual installed capacity of 1.8 million units. Once this facility is completed, it will take the company's total installed capacity to around 11 million units.

 The company reported sales of 535,810 units in July 2019, slipping 21 per cent from the same month a year ago, when the two-wheeler manufacturer had reported overall sales volumes of 679,862 units...Read More

Cognizant plans another round of layoffs to slash costs, says report

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Cognizant is readying to let go of a few hundred employees, as it plans another round of layoffs as part of its strategy to slash costs, the Economic Times reported on Friday, citing sources with knowledge of the matter. Further, the report said that more ways of cutting spending were on the anvil at the IT major.
A source with knowledge of the matter told the financial daily that this was part of the appraisal process, which was "getting stricter". The source said, "If you were a marginal performer or have not been allocated (a project), then they would look at beginning a separation process." According to the report, the number of layoffs would be in a few
hundred, and employees who have more than eight years of experience would be targeted.As reportedly recently, Cognizant is exercising "tighter control" over expenses through a number of measures, including a slower pace of hiring and reduced travel expenses, as the company looks to re-invest in talent and digital solutions to drive growth. The US-based company told news agencies that it took "targeted actions" at senior-level executives in the second quarter, in a move that is expected to result in $65 million of annualised savings.
"...in the second quarter, we took targeted actions at the senior levels of our pyramid to simplify our organisation structure. These actions are expected to result in $65 million of annualised savings with approximately half of that to be realised in the remainder of 2019," Cognizant CFO Karen McLoughlin said at a recent earnings call. She added that in the next two quarters, the company expects to further reduce overall costs through a number of actions.

A Cognizant executive also told ET that the number of layoffs was being evaluated and that it would depend on growth as the quarter progresses. Further, the report said that the IT major has already suspended non-essential travel and taken other actions to cut spending...Read More

HTC takes brand-licensing route for a comeback; launches Wildfire X

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Taiwanese technology company HTC on August 14 launched the Wildfire X smartphone in India through its official brand licensee InOne Smart Technology. This Flipkart-exclusive product brings back HTC into the smartphone business after a silent gap of around a year.
The phone comes in two RAM and storage configurations – 3GB/32GB and 4GB/128GB – priced at Rs 9,999 and Rs 12,999, respectively. It will go on sale at the home-grown e-commerce platform starting from August 22.
HTC Wildfire X specifications
The HTC Wildfire X is a budget smartphone. It boasts a 6.22-inch IPS LCD screen of HD+ resolution. The screen has a waterdrop-shaped notch on top, accommodating the phone’s 8-megapixel front camera. On the back, the phone has a glass-like reflective design with a 3D gradient finish and a triple-camera set-up stacked vertically on the top left side.
The rear camera module includes a 12MP primary sensor, an 8MP telephoto lens for 2x optical zoom and 8x hybrid zoom, and a 5MP depth sensor. The phone is powered by 2.0GHz octacore processor built on 12nm process node and a 3,300 mAh battery, which supports 10W charging through the supplied USB type-C charging port.
The phone boots the Android Pie operating system, integrated with the ‘Mybuddy’ personal security feature, which triggers alarm, sends live location information to pre-saved numbers, and records and transmits audio/video of surroundings in real time in a time of crisis.

“HTC has always echoed the vivid taste and needs of the Indian customers with several firsts to its credit. The HTC Wildfire X with its unique “my buddy” feature is another step in this direction...Read More