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Press Trust of India | Updated: October 02, 2017 The ambitious initiative to use social media analytics to identify tax non-compliance is a $100-million project for the infotech arm of engineering giant Larsen & Toubro, according to a company official. Since the note ban last November, the government has been putting in lots of efforts to plug the loopholes in the taxation system using advanced technology and the attempt got an added focus since the Reserve Bank in June had admitted that as much 99 per cent of the banned banknotes had returned to the system, negating the stated intent of cancelling 87 per cent of the notes in circulation. "That is really advanced analytics. Now, that is like a $100-million deal for us. It's not a small deal," L&T Infotech chief executive and managing director Sanjay Jalona told PTI. Terming the work awarded by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) as a "high volume digital deal", he elaborated that the p...

By:  FE Bureau  |  Published: October 3, 2017 As part of the two million barrels contracted by India, the first shipment of US crude oil arrived here at Paradip Port in Odisha on Monday. The shipment follows recent commitments to US oil purchases by IndianOil ( IOC ) and  Bharat Petroleum  ( BPCL ), both of which have placed orders for over 2 million barrels from the US. As per a report, the US crude oil is $2 per barrel cheaper to India, compared with the most-imported Dubai crude. The shipment at Paradip was met by US consul general to Hyderabad Katherine Hadda, joint secretary for international cooperation in the petroleum ministry Sunjay Sudhir, and joint secretary (Americas division) in the ministry of external affairs (MEA) Munu Mahawar. While the US crude oil shipments to India have the potential to boost bilateral trade by up to $2 billion, this is one of the first shipments to India since the US stopped oil exports in 1975. According to a ...

PTI  |  Updated: Oct 1, 2017 Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday hinted that there is scope for lesser slabs under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) once there is revenue buoyancy. "We are in first 2-3 months (of GST implementation). We have almost by the day, space and scope for improvement. We have space for improvement and need for improvement to reduce compliance burden as far as small taxpayers are concerned," he said. "We have space for improvement, eventually once we become revenue neutral, to think in terms of bigger reforms such as lesser slabs, but for that we have to become revenue neutral ... ," he said at an event organised here by the National Academy of Customs, Indirect Taxes and Narcotics (NACIN). Currently, the GST regime slots items under rates of 5, 12, 18 and 28 per cent+ . An additional GST compensation cess is also levied on certain products. Emphasising that indirect tax burden is borne by all sections of the society,...

Saifullah Cheema, September 30, 2017 A legal team — on behalf of the chief of the banned Jamaatud Dawa (JuD), Hafiz Saeed — on Friday sent a Rs100 million defamation notice to Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif for his remarks at the Asia Society forum in New York earlier this week. Asif, who told the forum that Pakistan was not to blame for militant outfits in the country, had said: "Don't blame us for the Haqqanis [the Haqqani Network] and don't blame us for the Hafiz Saeeds [referring to the head of banned Jamaatud Dawa]. These people were your darlings just 20 to 30 years back. They were being dined and wined in the White House and now you say 'go to hell Pakistanis because you are nurturing these people'." The notice, served by Advocate AK Dogar under Section 8 of the Defamation Ordinance of 2002, claims that Saeed is "respected as a deeply religious and devout Muslim". "I will be failing in my duty as a lawyer if I do not remind you...

K. R. SRIVATS, NEW DELHI, SEP 30 India has called for renewed efforts for greater integration of the global financial system to foster better trading relations among countries, enabling faster expansion of their economies. “What is important is to create a financial architecture, which facilitates flow of capital from one country to another. The architecture will facilitate savings, which leads to investments, which leads to growth, which will facilitate further expansion. With the right regulation, this will lead to the same cycle growth and ensure that growth takes place and does not get hindered, “ Suresh Prabhu, Union Commerce and Industry Minister said. He was inaugurating the three-day India-US Symposium on “Building the Financial System of the 21stCentury: An Agenda for India and the United States”, here on Thursday. Pointing out that one is living in very testing and challenging times, Prabhu told the gathering, which included Mr. Michael Kaplan, Deputy Assist...

Mihir Dalal, October 03,2017 Bengaluru:  The number of new internet and technology start-ups launched in the first nine months of this year has slumped to 800 from more than 6,000 in all of last year, as start-up closures, the struggles of large internet companies such as Snapdeal and a slowdown in the growth of the e-commerce market took their toll on entrepreneurial activity. According to data from Tracxn, a start-up tracker, the number of new start-ups has now dropped steeply for two years in a row. Mint reported on 22 September that while some investors are again interested in backing new consumer internet start-ups, there is an acute shortage of such companies. The slump in new start-up launches is a worrying trend for the nascent Indian start-up ecosystem. It is a legacy of the go-go years of 2014 and 2015, when investors rushed to fund internet start-ups in the belief that the Indian internet market would turn out to be a gold mine in a very short period ...

TNN|Updated: Sep 30, 2017 NEW DELHI: The income tax department has referred at least 400 cases of corruption and money laundering to the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI for further probe and attachment of the “proceeds of crime“.  On Friday , Central Board of Direct Taxes chairman Sushil Chandra, in a presentation before members of the parliamentary consultative committee on finance, said the government had entered into collaboration with 148 countries for exchange of information related to tax matters.  Later, briefing the members, FM Arun Jaitley said the I-T department's drive against black money had resulted in the seizure of more than Rs 600 crore, of which Rs 513 crore was in cash. He said undisclosed income of Rs 5,400 crore was detected in the 1,100 follow-up searches conducted by the department after demonetisation.  Members of the committee urged the FM to give more incentives to honest taxpayers by further lowering tax slabs, and appreciat...

Amit Raj, October 03,2017 New Delhi:  Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom), which on Sunday  called off  a planned merger of its wireless unit with Aircel Ltd, is preparing to monetize assets ranging from spectrum to real estate as it strives to repay debt owed to banks, a top company executive said. Under a revised plan, the company will be able to pare debt by as much as Rs25,000 crore, or more than half, much before December 2018, executive director Punit Garg said in an interview on Monday. The company plans to adopt a 4G-focused policy, which would enable it to monetize its 2G and 3G spectrum, he said. It has also put on sale real estate assets in Hyderabad, Chennai and Navi Mumbai, apart from its corporate office in Delhi and the Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City in Navi Mumbai. The moves, if successful, will pare debt significantly and bring relief to the company, which has been negotiating loan repayment terms with creditors. RCom is weighed down by Rs45,0...

Divya Goyal | Ludhiana | Updated: October 1, 2017 The Ludhiana police in a joint operation with the counter intelligence wing and central intelligence agencies, allegedly arrested seven Babbar Khalsa militants on Saturday including a 17-year old minor from Moga. Addressing the mediapersons, Ludhiana police commissioner RN Dhoke said that the arrested persons were associated with Babbar Khalsa, the pro-Khalistan militant group. They were allegedly ‘planning to disturb peace in Punjab and target the people who were writing against Khalistan and Sikh panth on social media.’ They were getting financial assistance and weapons from Surinder Singh Babbar, an active Babbar Khalsa commander hiding in England, said Dhoke. Police sources said that it is also being probed if these persons were involved in the mysterious murders of Hindu leaders including senior RSS leader Jagdish Gagneja, Shiv Sena leader Durg Prasad Gupta and Hindu Takht leader Amit Sharma. The arrested pers...

By: Associated Press | Bangladesh | Published: September 30, 2017 He trekked to Bangladesh as part of an exodus of a half million people from Myanmar, the largest refugee crisis to hit Asia in decades. But after climbing out of a boat on a creek on Friday, Mohamed Rafiq could go no further. He collapsed onto a muddy spit of land cradling his wife in his lap – a limp figure so exhausted and so hungry she could no longer walk or even raise her wrists. The couple had no food, no money, no idea what to do next. Their two traumatized children huddled close beside them, unsure what to make of the country they had arrived in just hours earlier, in the middle of the night. Rafiq said their third child, an 8-month-old boy, had been left behind. Buddhist mobs in Myanmar burned the child to death, he said, after setting their village ablaze while security forces stood idly by – part of a systematic purge of ethnic Rohingya Muslims from Buddhist-majority Myanmar that the United Nations has c...