India's economic engine is revving up, but navigating the global headwinds requires sharp strategy. The rupee's recent volatility against the dollar underscores the complexities facing Indian businesses, impacting everything from import-export trade to domestic inflation. This week alone, we've seen significant shifts in the IT sector, with major players announcing restructuring and a renewed focus on AI-driven solutions. Meanwhile, the burgeoning startup ecosystem continues to attract substantial funding, despite a cautious global investor sentiment. The government's recent policy announcements on infrastructure development and digitalization are poised to further shape the business landscape, creating both opportunities and challenges for entrepreneurs and established corporations alike. Understanding these market dynamics is crucial for success in today's rapidly evolving Indian economy. Stay informed with Abtak.com for the latest insights and analysis on key sectors including finance, manufacturing, and technology – empowering your business decisions in a dynamic market. Explore the complete business news section now to stay ahead of the curve.
Mumbai: The Income Tax Department has introduced a new website called 'Kar Saathi' to make filing income tax returns (ITR) simpler and faster. It is designed as an AI-powered assistant that helps taxpayers understand and complete their tax-related work easily. According to the department, the platform brings all income tax information together in one place. It is built to be easy to use, quick to navigate, and helpful for both new and existing taxpayers. AI Support For Taxpayers 'Kar Saathi' works like a digital companion. It helps users with their direct tax queries and guides them through the filing process. The government aims to reduce confusion and make tax compliance smoother through this AI-based system. CBDT Chairman Ravi Agarwal had earlier said that such services will also be available offline in the future, ensuring wider accessibility. Part Of Bigger Tax Reform Plan The platform is part of the government's PRARAMBH initiative, which focuses on policy reforms and smoother implementation of new systems. It supports the transition to the new Income Tax Act, 2025. The Central Board of Direct Taxes has also simplified the tax system by reducing the number of forms from 396 to 190. New forms have been standardised and redesigned to make filing easier. New Tax Rules From April 1, 2026 The old Income Tax Act, 1961 has been replaced from April 1, 2026. However, some ongoing cases will continue under the old law to avoid disruption. A major change is the introduction of a single "Tax Year" from April 1 to March 31. This replaces the earlier system of separate Financial Year and Assessment Year, making the process simpler and clearer for taxpayers. Overall, 'Kar Saathi' marks a major step towards making India's tax system more modern, digital, and user-friendly.
New Delhi, Nov 26: A day after the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the PAN 2.0, the Income Tax Department on Tuesday issued a detailed clarification on the project based on a list of 11 frequently asked questions (FAQs) to provide taxpayers with a deeper insight into the new system. 1. What is PAN 2.0? PAN 2.0 Project is an e-Governance project of the Income Tax Department for re-engineering the business processes of taxpayer registration services. The objective of the project is to enhance the quality of PAN services through the adoption of the latest technology. Under this pr ...Read More >
New Delhi [India], January 8 (ANI): The upcoming union budget 2025-26 should focus on giving personal tax relief to common taxpayers by raising the basic exemption limit in the new tax regime from Rs 3 lakhs to Rs5 lakhs and reducing tax rates, suggests global consulting and professional services firm Ernst & Young India (EY India). EY India also asks for deferring tax deduction at source (TDS) on PF interest rate (above 2.5 lakhs) until the withdrawal stage to reduce compliance burden. In the previous budget TDS rate rationalization was undertaken to a certain extent. To further simplify th ...Read More >
New Delhi: Taxpayers now have more time to file their Income Tax Returns (ITR), as the deadline has been extended to September 15, 2025. While many have already completed the process, others are still getting their documents in order. To make your ITR filing hassle-free, here are 8 important documents you should keep handy. 1. Form 16 Form-16 is a must-have if you're a salaried employee. It gives a detailed summary of your salary, along with the tax deducted by your employer during the year. 2. TDS Certificates TDS certificates are proof that tax has been deducted from your income. These a ...Read More >
A Delhi court has declared UK-based arms consultant Sanjay Bhandari a fugitive economic offender following a request from the Enforcement Directorate. Bhandari, accused of money laundering, reportedly fled to the UK in 2016. Despite India's efforts to extradite him, a UK court recently rejected the plea, further complicating the legal proceedings against him.A Delhi court on Saturday declared UK-based arms consultant Sanjay Bhandari a fugitive economic offender on an Enforcement Directorate plea, ...Read More >
Patna (Bihar) [India], July 6 (ANI): The ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) campaign of the electoral rolls in Bihar is progressing rapidly and recognizing the efforts of the Polling station officials, the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Bihar has announced a special incentive of Rs 6,000 for each. This additional honorarium is aimed at acknowledging their hard work and commitment during the intensive revision process. Also Read | PM Narendra Modi, Argentine President Javier Milei Agree to Diversify India-Argentina Trade Basket, Vows to Expand Cooperation in Defence, Security and Mine ...Read More >
New Delhi: Income Tax refunds have jumped 474% in the last 11 years to Rs 4.8 lakh crore in 2024-25, significantly outpacing the 274% growth in gross tax collections, sources said on Sunday. Also, there has been an 81% decrease in number of days it takes to issue income tax refunds, decreasing from 93 days in 2013 to just 17 days in 2024. As of 2013-14, the last year of the UPA rule, refunds issued by the Income Tax department were at Rs 83,008 crore. Whereas, at the end of 2024-25, the 11th year of the ongoing NDA rule, I-T refunds stood at Rs 4.77 lakh crore, showing a 474% growth during th ...Read More >
New Delhi: The main source of income of any country is tax. If we talk only about India, here income tax is levied according to the income of the people. That is, people who earn less have to pay less tax. The highest rate of income tax in the country is 39 percent. In many countries of the world, the tax rate is less than India while in many countries it is higher. There are some countries in the world where tax is not levied. In such a situation, the question arises that how will the economy of these countries run? The countries where tax is not levied include most of the Gulf countries. Ap ...Read More >
Mumbai: The income tax (IT) department conducted raids at over 150 locations across the country against false tax deduction disguised as political donations as well as educational and medical expenses. The investigation has revealed that employees of government bodies, public sector undertaking (PUS), multinational companies, academic institutions and entrepreneurs were a part of these organised rackets. On Monday, the IT department initiated a large-scale verification operation across multiple locations in the country, targeting individuals and entities facilitating fraudulent claims of dedu ...Read More >
The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved Nitin Gupta as the new Chairperson of the National Financial Reporting Authority. Gupta, a former IRS officer, is set to lead the independent auditing regulator, reinforcing standards and trust in financial reporting. Three additional members have also been appointed. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has officially appointed Nitin Gupta, a retired Indian Revenue Service officer, as the Chairperson of the National Financial Reporting ...Read More >
New Delhi, Jun 5 (PTI) Fintech firm BimaPay Finsure on Thursday said it has entered into corporate insurance financing and aims for Rs 20 crore in premiums in 2025-26. Launching the pilot phase with insurance partners, BimaPay said the initiative will allow businesses to pay premiums in easy equated monthly instalments (EMIs) instead of bearing the burden of full upfront costs. Also Read | Who Is Pinaki Misra? From Age to Family Background and Net Worth, Here's All About BJD Leader With Whom Mahua Moitra Reportedly Married. The company aims to finance over Rs 20 crore worth of premiums by t ...Read More >
Bengaluru Power Cuts: Citizens of Bengaluru brace yourself for long hours of power outages from June 29 and June 30. More than 100 areas will be impacted as BESCOM undertakes its quarterly maintenance work in various of its division. Bengaluru Power Outages June 29: According to the update by BESCOM on its X handler, there will be power outages in Kittaganahalli, Palasandra, Saptagiri, Maruthinagar, Sankapur, Raghavendra Nagar, Goolarivee, Baddihalli, Kesaramadu, C.M Badawan, Kalalli and SKS village on June 29 from 10 am to 5 pm. BESCOM's executive engineer has appealed to consumers to coop ...Read More >
MUMBAI: The Indian equity indices opened lower on Friday as heavyweights like Axis Bank and Bharti Airtel were among the top losers in the BSE benchmark. At 9.25 am, Sensex was down 171 points or 0.21 per cent at 82, 087 and Nifty was down 35 points or 0.14 per cent at 25, 075. In the Sensex pack, M&M, Tata Steel, Power Grid, L&T, UltraTech Cement, Infosys, Tata Motors, BEL, NTPC, TCS, Trent and Maruti Suzuki were top gainers. Axis Bank, Bharti Airtel, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Tech Mahindra , HDFC Bank, Eternal (Zomato), HUL, Sun Pharma, Bajaj Finance, ICICI Bank, Titan and Bajaj Finserv ...Read More >
day after the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the PAN 2.0, the Income Tax Department on Tuesday issued a detailed clarification on the project based on a list of 11 frequently asked questions (FAQs) to provide taxpayers with a deeper insight into the new system. PAN 2.0 Project is an e-Governance project of the Income Tax Department for re-engineering the business processes of taxpayer registration services. The objective of the project is to enhance the quality of PAN services through the adoption of the latest technology. Under this project, ITD is consolidating all processes ...Read More >
Nagpur: The income tax (I-T) department has detected as many as 9,000 returns that were filed to claim fake exemptions from tax liabilities and refunds in Nagpur zone alone. The estimates so far indicate that exemptions to the tune of Rs100 crore were claimed. A large number of such returns were filed by policemen, railway employees, zilla parishad staffers, even as the list includes some private employees too.A sizeable number of filers claimed exemptions by misrepresenting their status as foreign nationals, whose income earned in India is free from tax, said sources privy to the development. ...Read More >
New Delhi: The Income Tax Bill 2025, set to be moved in the monsoon session of Parliament to simplify the direct tax law, will set the stage for another round of reforms which will be more substantive in nature in subsequent years, said two people informed about the discussions in the government The finance ministry is of the view that once the over-six-decade-old Income Tax Act, 1961 is simplified and made more readable, targeted reforms can be achieved in taxation of personal and corporate income. This will be done through the annual Finance Acts, said one of the persons quoted above. Majo ...Read More >
The Supreme Court on Monday stayed further recovery of an outstanding tax demand from news portal NewsClick, directing the company's banker not to release any more money to the tax department based on a 2023 notice, and allowing the portal to use its two bank accounts for daily operations. The order was passed by a bench headed by justice BV Nagarathna on an application moved by PPK Newsclick Studio Limited, which alleged that ICICI Bank was not allowing the company to use its accounts despite a top court order to this effect passed on August 9. The tax department had raised the demand again ...Read More >
New Delhi, Dec 18 (PTI) Net direct tax collection grew 16.45 per cent year-on-year to over Rs 15.82 lakh crore till December 17 this fiscal, buoyed by higher advance tax mop-up, government data showed. Advance tax collection during the period rose 21 per cent to Rs 7.56 lakh crore. The collection includes corporate tax of over Rs 7.42 lakh crore and non-corporate tax mop-up of Rs 7.97 lakh crore. Securities Transaction Tax (STT) of Rs 40,114 crore was collected between April 1-December 17 of current fiscal year. Refunds worth Rs 3.39 lakh crore were issued during the period, registering a ...Read More >
New Delhi [India], June 28 (ANI): The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the re-appointment of Ravi Agrawal, as Chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on a contract basis for one year, effective from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026, or until further orders, according to an official order. Last year, Agrawal, a 1988-batch IRS officer, was appointed as the new chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes, the administrative body for the Income Tax Department. Also Read | From 'Gajar Ka Halwa' to 'India Appears Bigger and More Majestic From Space': Here Is Full Tex ...Read More >
Imphal, June 29 (UNI) A series of successful operations carried out by Manipur Police and security forces during the last 24 hours led to the arrest of several individuals involved in vehicle theft, insurgent activity, and the recovery of a significant cache of arms and ammunition. Police arrested a vehicle lifter identified as Syed Riyaj from his residence at Lilong Chaobok in Thoubal District. The arrest was made under Lilong Police Station. Authorities seized a blue two wheeler without registration number, along with a key and an Aadhaar card believed to be linked to the suspect. In a s ...Read More >
New Delhi [India], July 5 (ANI): A Delhi special court on Saturday declared UK-based arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari a Fugitive Economic Offender under the Fugitive Economic Offenders (FEO) Act, in connection with an income tax case involving undisclosed foreign assets. The order was passed by Additional Sessions Judge Sanjeev Aggarwal following a plea by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which alleged that Bhandari had deliberately evaded Indian legal proceedings and possessed foreign assets exceeding Rs 100 crore. The agency emphasised that the UK court's refusal to extradite Bhandari had no be ...Read More >
The Income-Tax Department has found organised rackets operated by some returns preparers and intermediaries across the country, filing income-tax returns (ITRs) on behalf of their clients -- including employees of multinational companies, public sector firms, government bodies, academic institutions, and entrepreneurs -- to fraudulently claim exemptions and refunds, the Finance Ministry said. The department is now poised to take stern action against continued fraudulent claims, including penalti ...Read More >
Ahmedabad: The financial data received from third-party sources, ground-level intelligence, and advanced artificial intelligence tools helped the income tax (I-T) department sleuths to unearth a nationwide scam of bogus claims of deductions and exemptions.Investigations uncovered organised rackets operated by certain ITR preparers and intermediaries, who filed returns claiming fictitious deductions and exemptions. These fraudulent filings involved the abuse of beneficial provisions, with some even submitting false TDS returns to claim excessive refunds, read the release by the Central Board of ...Read More >
Patna: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday formally arrested Aditya Saurabh, an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, along with an income-tax inspector and a multi-tasking staff (MTS) member in Patna in connection with a bribery case involving Rs 2 lakh. All three were remanded in three days' CBI custody by the CBI special court-1 in Patna.According to CBI sources, Aditya Saurabh, a 2021-batch IRS officer, is currently serving as assistant director in the income-tax Department ...Read More >
Calling for a ground-level change needed to make India move beyond the assembly line to become a true manufacturing power, Leader of Opposition (LoP) in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Saturday stated that India in the name of "Make in India" is merely assembling products and not truly manufacturing them. Gandhi, in a post on X, stated that 80 per cent of the components of most TVs made in India come from China. He further pointed out that a lack of policy and support, along with heavy taxes and the ...Read More >
For investors, this means that any profits made from selling cryptocurrencies will now be subject to capital gains tax.Source : Ewan Kennedy/Unsplash The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) in Jodhpur has provided much-needed clarity on the taxation of cryptocurrencies in India. The ruling recognises cryptocurrencies as capital assets, setting a framework for how profits from their sale are taxed, especially for transactions made before the Government introduced specific guidelines for Virtual ...Read More >
New Delhi [India], June 30 (ANI): The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Chairman Ravi Agarwal has issued strict directives to Faceless Assessment Officers (FAOs) to avoid raising irrelevant queries while conducting faceless assessments, emphasising the need for more focused and case-specific scrutiny procedures. Chairman Ravi Agarwal has written to the Principal Chief Commissioners of Income Tax, directing them to ensure that faceless assessment officers maintain higher standards of inquiry relevance and specificity in their assessments. Also Read | Rinku Singh Appointed Basic Education O ...Read More >
Mumbai, July 11: The Income Tax Department has officially released the Excel-based utilities for ITR-2 and ITR-3 forms for the Assessment Year (AY) 2025-26, enabling individuals with more complex income sources, including capital gains, cryptocurrency, and professional income, to begin filing their tax returns. The announcement was made via the department's official X, formerly Twitter, handle, saying, "Attention Taxpayers! Excel Utilities of ITR-2 and ITR-3 for AY 2025-26 are now live and available for filing." This latest rollout follows the earlier launch of utilities for ITR-1 and ITR-4, ...Read More >
New Delhi [India], December 18 (ANI): The gross direct tax collections by the government so far in 2024-15 were 20.32 per cent higher on a yearly basis at Rs 19.21 lakh crore, data released by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) showed on Wednesday. During the same period last year, the gross tax collections were to the tune of Rs 15.96 lakh crore. Coming to net direct tax collection, it rose 16.45 per cent to Rs 15.82 lakh crore from Rs 13.59 lakh crore mopped up during the year-ago period. Refunds for the period rose 42.49 per cent to Rs 3.38 lakh crore from Rs 2.37 lakh crore in the ...Read More >
India Budget: The Union Budget 2025-26 should prioritise giving tax relief to common taxpayers by raising the basic exemption limit in the new tax regime from ₹3 lakh to ₹5 lakh and lowering tax rates, according to Ernst & Young India (EY India), a global consulting firm. EY India also recommended delaying the tax deduction at source (TDS) on provident fund (PF) interest above ₹2.5 lakh until the withdrawal stage to reduce the compliance burden on taxpayers. Also Read: India to simplify decades-old income tax filing rules in Budget In the last budget, some TDS rate rationalisation was intro ...Read More >
Mumbai: Senior BJP leader Ravindra Chavan is all set to become the next Maharashtra BJP chief as he filed his nomination for the post of party's state president on Monday. Mr. Chavan presented the nomination forms to Union Minister Kiran Rijiju, who has been appointed as a central observer for the elections by the BJP. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and outgoing party chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule were present on this occasion. With no other nomination being filed for the post, Mr. Chavan is certain to become the next state president of Maharashtra BJP, said party leaders. The ...Read More >