Thursday, October 13, 2016

SetCom has powers to make addition in income of assessee to determine tax liability: HC

Facts:

a) The CIT challenged the order passed by the Settlement Commission (‘SetCom’). Such order was challenged on the ground that the order passed by Set Com was without jurisdiction as the assessee had failed to comply with the statutory requirements under Section 245-C which stipulates that there must be "full and true disclosure" in the Settlement Applications; 

b) It was further stated that when the Set Com had made further addition, it was clear that there was no full or true disclosure of the statement by the assessee for which the Commission should not have allowed the application of the assessee.

The High Court held as under:

1) The Set Com has also got powers to find out if at all any income left out or could not be disclosed by the assessee to come to a mechanism of settlement.

2) The settlement is not only covered by the dispute which arose before them but also for the dispute yet to come. So the Commission has got wide power to consider the income disclosed, add additional income after due investigation and also to add any income which is found to be valid as per report submitted by the Department and finally settle the tax payable by the assessee. [2016] 73 taxmann.com 93 (Orissa)

Ban on circulation of trading tips via social media – 8 things you should know

The SEBI has issued consultation paper proposing amendments or clarifications to the investment adviser regulations. The objective of the consultation paper is to specify uniform standards across all the intermediaries/persons engaged in providing investment advisory services irrespective of whether such activity is incidental to their primary activity or not and to address the gaps or overlaps in legal or regulatory standards.

The key highlights of consultative papers are as under:

1. Ban on circulation of trading tips via social media platform: SEBI has proposed to curb the practice of providing trading tips (containing buy or sell recommendation on securities) to the general public through any social media platform such as SMSs, email, telephonic call, whatsapp, ChatOn, Wechat, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

2. Restrictions on mutual fund distributors: Under the existing norms, a mutual fund distributor can sell mutual fund products and he can also provide basic advice on mutual fund products and in executing the transactions. It has been proposed that only corporate entities registered as investment advisers should offer execution or distribution services. Further, mutual fund distributors should be registered as investment advisors if they want to engage themselves in providing incidental or basic investment advisory services on mutual fund products.