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Ministry of Finance Income-tax Exemption for payment of deemed LTC fare for non-Central Government employees Posted On: 29 OCT 2020 8:11PM by PIB Delhi In view of the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant nationwide lockdown as well as disruption of transport and hospitality sector, as also the need for observing social distancing, a number of employees are not able to avail of Leave Travel Concession (LTC) in the current Block of 2018-21. With a view to compensate  Central Government employees and incentivise consumption, thereby giving a boost to consumption expenditure, the Government of India allowed payment of cash allowance equivalent  to  LTC fare to Central Government employees subject to fulfilment of certain conditions vide OM No F. No 12(2)/2020-EII (A) dated 12th October 2020. It has also been provided that since the cash allowance of LTC fare is in lieu of deemed actual travel, the same shall be eligible for income-tax exemption on the lines of existing income-tax exemption avai

Posted On: 24 OCT 2020 2:27PM by PIB Delhi In view of the challenges faced by taxpayers in meeting the statutory and regulatory compliances due to the outbreak of COVID-19, the Government brought the Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation of Certain Provisions) Ordinance, 2020 (‘the Ordinance’) on 31st March, 2020 which, inter alia, extended various time limits. The Ordinance has since been replaced by the Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation and Amendment of Certain Provisions) Act. The Government issued a Notification on 24 th June, 2020 under the Ordinance which, inter alia, extended the  due date for all Income Tax Returns for the FY 2019-20 (AY 2020-21) to 30th November, 2020. Hence, the returns of income which were required to be filed by 31st July, 2020 and 31st October, 2020 are required to be filed by 30th November, 2020. Consequently, the date for furnishing various audit reports including tax audit report under the Income-tax Act, 1961 (the Act) has also been extended to 31st Oc

Posted On: 19 OCT 2020 5:50PM by PIB Delhi As part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat Package, the Government has announced to cover 2.5 crore farmers under the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme with a credit boost of Rs. 2 lakh crore through a special saturation drive. As a result of concerted and sustained efforts by the banks and other stakeholders in the direction of providing access to concessional credit by the farmers, including Fishermen and Dairy farmers, a major milestone target of covering more than 1.5 crore farmers under KCC, with sanctioned credit limit of Rs.1.35 lakh crore has been achieved. The KCC Scheme was introduced in the year 1998 with the objectives of providing adequate and timely credit to the farmers for their agricultural operation. The Government of India provides interest subvention of 2% and Prompt Repayment Incentive of 3% to the farmers, thus making the credit available at a very subsidized rate of 4% per annum. Government has taken a major farmer friendly steps by

Posted On: 13 OCT 2020 9:54PM by PIB Delhi A report has appeared in the Economic Times Markets (ETMarkets.com) which gives the impression that the LTC voucher scheme for Government employees may not be attractive. Unfortunately, the piece which it relies on has a serious factual error in its understanding of how Government LTC works. It is based on the erroneous assumption that leave travel money can be retained by paying income tax without travelling.  The key assumption in the report claims: "They would be better off paying taxes on the LTC amount availed instead." The Government LTC is quite different from Leave Travel Allowance in the corporate sector. A person claiming LTC is  not eligible unless he actually travels;   if he fails to travel the amount is deducted from his pay and he may be liable for disciplinary action. He does not have the option of keeping the money and paying income tax.  Under the government system, the employee had only two choices: 1)Travel and sp

Vide notification No. 69/2020 – Central Tax, dated 30.09.2020, the due date for furnishing of the Annual Return for the FY 2018-19 has been extended till 31.10.2020. Certain representations have been received stating that the auto populated GSTR 9 for the year 2018-19 (Tables 4, 5, 6 and 7) also includes the data for FY 2017-18. However, this information for FY 2017-18 has already been furnished by the taxpayers in the annual return (GSTR9) filed for FY 2017-18 and there is no mechanism to show the split of two years (2017-18 & 2018-19) in FORM GSTR-9 for 2018-19. In this regard, it is clarified that the taxpayers are required to  report only the values pertaining to Financial Year 2018-19  and the values pertaining to Financial Year 2017-18 which may have already been reported or adjustedare to be ignored. No adverse view would be taken in cases where there are variations in returns for taxpayers who have already filed their  GSTR-9  of Financial Year 2018-19 by including the deta