Girish's Blog

The government is thinking of making eating of ice-cream at service parlours subject to service tax! Why? Because ice-cream parlours are air-conditioned and hence subject to service tax!! The question is whether ice-cream is a product or a service! To my mind ice-cream is a manufactured product and is subject to excise duty once it leaves the factory. Because it is a product it will be subject to VAT as per the respective State laws. Now an additional dose of tax – service tax @ 12.36% over and above the two taxes. This will lead to taxation in excess of 35% on ice cream is eaten at ice-cream parlour…..it just makes me want to scream. The basics of product vis-à-vis service is being brought into question by fuddy-duddy bureaucrats who want to be in the good books of the Finance Ministry by whatever means possible and the citizenry at large be damned, I guess. It is apparent that a useless Government is trying to fill its pockets through all means possible to enhance its coffer...

  This note is being written in response to various calls I have got from clients with respect to the TDS provision on property transactions. Effective from 1 June 2013, taxes are to be deducted at source ('TDS') on payments for the purchase of immovable property (including any land other than agricultural land, or any building or part of a building) @ 1 per cent as per section 1941A. Taxes would be required to be deducted @ 20 per cent should the seller not hold a PAN. Such requirement to deduct taxes is triggered should the purchased property's cost exceed Rs. 5,000,000.  The representations made by the Confederation of Real Estate Developers of India requesting a rollback of the section was not accepted thus dashing the hopes of the industry. As the rules for the same were not notified there was the hope of a possible rollback similar to the one performed last year, when such a proposal was placed in the Finance Bill, 2012 but not enacted into the Finance Act, 2012. ...

I have stopped reading newspapers in as much detail as I used to earlier and I have completely stopped watching news channels on TV. What is reported is not news – in the print media what you read is sensationalism in the garb of ‘news’ – on TV it is more about TRP and advertising revenue – with 3-4 day old news still being shown as ‘breaking new’!! You open any newspaper it will have news of some scam or the other, rape, murder, land grab, corruption in the local body, suicide, police high handedness, etc – day in day out it is the same with a different set of characters! Good news is hardly ever published. There is plenty of good work being done by unknown local people in the interiors of the country, selflessly and without expectation, but this is not newsworthy as it does not SELL! Take a case In point – the current news being flogged to death – MS Dhoni and conflict of interest via his business connections. He is a director in 12 companies shout the headlines! Most of these c...