New Delhi: Providing ease to exporters affected by the rupee appreciation in the exchange market, the administration declared they would be relieved from the tax on services rendered by road transp

The finance ministry has announced exemption for exporters from services taxes by ports, railways and road transport. Many exporters have been hit badly due to recent downtrend in US dollar. The rupee value has appreciated recently and has hit the net profits of many companies.

The statement issued by Finance Ministry said, "Government has issued a notification providing refund of service tax paid by exporters on four taxable services, which are not in the nature of input services but could be linked to export goods."

New Delhi: The government is expected to bring in biometric PAN cards shortly to tackle the problem of increasing misuse of Permanent Account Number (PAN) cards.

Finance Minister, P Chidambaram said in Lok Sabha that a combined Working Group in the Finance Ministry has given its statement after getting technical and commercial propositions from top biometric solution providers.

Authority for Advance Rulings has decided that the income-tax department cannot apply transfer pricing provisions, if a foreign company does not have a liability to pay tax. This ruling would give relief to the Netherlands-based Vanenburg Group BV which had shifted the entire shareholding of its Indian subsidiary Cordys R&D (India) Pvt Ltd to its Cordys Holdings BV (Netherlands).
Vanenburg Group had asked a judgment from the AAR on whether the relocation would draw capital gains tax and the transfer pricing provisions under Sections 92-92F of the Income-Tax Act, 1961.

The Constitution and List I in the seventh schedule says that tax on income is imposed by the Union government. The Constitution concedes exempt to state governments from charging income tax, also, state’s property and income is exempted from union taxation.

The exemption provided is for government as well as non-government activities of a state. But, state-owned companies or corporations claimed that their trade or business is carried on behalf of the state government and in reality, it is the state government which carries on business through them. The surplus generated by such activities belongs to the state government. Hence, they are entitled to be treated as state.