Aanchal Magazine

In an interview to The Indian Express, Somanathan — who earlier served in the Prime Minister’s Office for over two years and then was posted as Principal Secretary with the Tamil Nadu government — said the government didn’t want to do anything “imprudent”.

With heightened polarisation, it’s easy to cite Kashmiri Pandits, either to evoke hatred or to paint them with one brush of Hindutva. But, what have they done in these 30 years? Have they picked up guns? Have they incited violence?

In an interview with The Indian Express, Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said “there has to be a balance” on protection for employees.

New Income Tax slabs: In absolute terms, out of 5.78 crore tax filers, about 5.3 crore (91.7 per cent) claimed deductions of less than Rs 2 lakh, including those under section 80C, Section 80D, section 80CCD(1B) (additional deduction of NPS), deduction for housing loan interest and standard deduction in 2018-19.

Pandey said a progressive and graded income-tax system is internationally considered to be one of the best practices, and differs from the indirect tax system, where the aim is to lower the number of tax slabs to reduce complexities.

At present, Section 132 of the CGST Act treats supply of goods and services without issuance of any invoice, issuance of any invoice or bill without supply of goods or services, collection of tax but non-payment to government as non-bailable and cognizable offences.

Under the scheme, Sitharaman said any taxpayer currently in dispute with the government over the pending dues will be allowed to pay just the principal amount.

The Union Budget for 2020-21 has proposed a combined cap of Rs 7.5 lakh for the employer’s contribution to these three categories of payouts, with the amount over and above this to be taxed in the hands of the employees.

For the next year, the government is relying heavily on non tax revenue – for example, target for disinvestment receipts is up more than three times at record Rs 2.1 lakh crore in 2020-21 – to bridge the revenue gap.

It has also decided to amend customs rules to allow safeguards to limit quantities of imported products that it feels will “threaten” the domestic industry.

Ahead of Budget today, Subramanian recommends rationalisation of subsidies to create fiscal headroom

The growth rate for 2017-18 was also revised down to 7 per cent from 7.2 per cent earlier, the data released by National Statistical Office (NSO) showed.

He said India needs a clear narrative on where it’s going, what it’s going to look like in 10 years, what the growth sectors are, and what is the government’s priority.

Sen said the deficit’s understatement by at least 2 percentage points has resulted in the central government’s debt being passed on to balance sheets of state governments and the PSUs among others.

The Centre is also expected to miss on its target from disinvestment collections. In this year’s Budget, the government has set a disinvestment target of Rs 1,05,000 crore, compared to Rs 80,000 crore in 2018-19. However, the Centre has raised only Rs 18,094.59 crore so far.

As of now, the government does have a calender for release of data sets such as national accounts, Index of Industrial Production and inflation. But there are no specific timeline for release of labour force statistics and consumption expenditure surveys.

The tradition of deciding by consensus has been broken, and the Council could now see voting on other issues as well. What are the rules of voting, and can the Centre’s view be defeated by states?

Manufacturing growth is seen slowing to 2.0 per cent in 2019-20 from 6.9 per cent last year, while construction is expected to post a growth of 3.2 per cent in 2019-20 from 8.7 per cent last year.

The committee, in its first meeting, did a stock taking exercise, taking note of the present datasets, one of the members said. Detailed presentations were made on Annual Survey of Industries, the member added.