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Tatas strive to raise Rs 15K cr
Is RIL downsizing staff?
Meltdown hits railways’ freight earnings
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JLR warns of job cuts
Tax Advice
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Tatas strive to raise Rs 15K cr
New Delhi, December 21 Resource mobilisations through public offer of debt securities, sale of Tata Motors' vehicle loan pool, private equity placement and soliciting public deposits apart, the group is also seeking support from UK and Dutch governments for rescuing its prized purchases Corus and Jaguar-Land Rover. While Tatas' discussions with the governments in Britain and Netherlands have not taken a final shape either way, the SEBI has asked for clarifications on an open offer related to sale of 26 per cent equity in Tata Teleservices to Japan's NTT DoCoMo. No answers could be obtained from the group on queries related to the open offer that is being made for up to 20 per cent share acquisition in Tata Tele's listed arm Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra). There were also no response on the quantum and options of fund mobilisation, but estimates show that it could be in the range of Rs 15,000 crore to Rs 20,000 crore. After initiating the process for raising about Rs 2,700 crore through public deposits, Tata Motors is believed to be mulling raising about Rs 10,000 crore by selling its vehicle loan pool, most probably to a group company. At the same time, another group entity Tata Capital is looking to raise about Rs 1,000 crore through a public offer of debt securities. The same company is also planning to raise about $350-500 million (about Rs 2,000 crore) through private equity route. — PTI |
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Is RIL downsizing staff?
New Delhi, December 21 From retail to SEZs to the $6 billion semiconductor business, investment plans appear to be caught in the web of the slowdown. “As a good corporate practice, we constantly examine cost competitiveness and take appropriate measures regularly. It is a practice which is undertaken constantly at Reliance,” a spokesperson for Mukesh Ambani-led RIL group told PTI. He was responding to a query whether the group was going ahead with a major restructuring and if it had mandated consultants like Cummins to recommend human resource remedy and whether these advisers had made strong recommendations for cutting the overlapping activities. Though the spokesperson dismissed the possibility of restructuring as speculative, sources said that one of major indicators of the cost-cutting was that RIL had vacated five floors it had rented in a Connaught Place building and moved to another office in Okhla, amid speculations that many of the outsourced employees — be those for retail or SEZ businesses — were shown the door. Asked if a salary cut of up to 15 per cent was in the offing for its middle-to-senior level executives, he said the query was “baseless and speculative” and “we do not wish to comment on the same”. He also evaded a direct reply to a question whether the group had cut its workforce, including a majority of the contractual as also the workers from contractors for various businesses, by up to 20,000 persons so far this year. — PTI |
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Meltdown hits railways’ freight earnings
New Delhi, December 21 While there has been some sectors where the Indian Railways has seen a major uptrend, its revenue growth slowed to 6.52 per cent in October from 19.31 per cent in the same month last year. In a written reply to Parliament, railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav said, “the decline in railways freight earnings is attributable to a slackening of market demand for transportation in the present environment of economic downturn”. He added that revenue of the Indian Railways had gone down in October because a slowdown in the economy led to a drop in freight income. Yadav said during October, earnings from freight, which constitutes bulk of railway revenue earnings, dipped to single digit at 4.91 per cent compared to the corresponding month of last year. According to the data provided in the period between April-October, the earnings of railways from passenger and goods traffic, however, rose by 15.76 per cent a year in comparison to the same period last year. The total earnings in the period stood at Rs 445.48 billion. Railways felt the effect of the slowdown in the economy, which led to a fall in industrial output to 0.4 per cent in October from a year earlier. Exports also declined by 12 per cent. Incidentally, the railway ministry has sought Parliamentary approval to spend Rs 17 billion over the budgeted Rs 299.39 billion in the finanacial year 2008-09 for completion of ongoing projects. According to the minister, to counter the effect of the slowdown on financial health of railways, the ministry has taken a number of steps to boost demand for transportation. |
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JLR warns of job cuts
London, December 21 The report noted that the company has already cut 2,000 posts since its takeover by Tata Motors earlier this year. — PTI |
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Tax Advice
Q. Is it possible to withdraw the fixed deposit made in terms of Section 80C of the Act?
2. I have received a sum of Rs 5 lakh as an ex gratia payment on my premature retirement from the services. Is it possible to get any exemption from the Income-tax on the amount so received? — Sanjay Goel A. The replies to your queries are as under: (i) The fixed deposits made in a bank in accordance with the requirements of Section 80C of the Act cannot be prematurely withdrawn. This is in accordance with the clause 11(2) of the Bank Term Deposit Scheme 2006, which provides that no term deposit shall be encashed before the expiry of 5 years from the date of its receipt. (ii) In my opinion there is no section which provides for any relief or rebate for the ex-gratia amount received by an employee on termination of his employment. The only exemption provided by Section 10C of the Act is in respect of amount received on the voluntary retirement or termination of the services of an employee in accordance with any scheme or scheme of voluntary retirement or in the case of public sector company, scheme of voluntary separation to the extent such amount does not exceeds Rs 5 lakh. If your friend is covered within the aforesaid scheme an amount to the extent of Rs 5 lakh would be exempt from tax. Revised return
Q. By Notification No 271 of November 7, 2007, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has amended the Rule 3, which deals among others, the valuation of perquisite value for rentfree /concessional accommodation by which the perquisite value for accommodation has been revised at 7.5% / 10% / 15% from the earlier rates of 15% and 20% and this amendment is effective from 1.4.2006. Our employer did revise the said rates for the year April 2007 to March 2008 and accordingly the rate of 7.5% was considered for employees at all effective locations in Form-16 issued to us. As regards the effect for the FY April 2006 to March 2007, since the notification was issued late (07-11-07), Rent Free /Concessional Accommodation perquisite value was computed as 15% (in place of 7.5% as per notification) in Form-16, on the basis of which, income tax was deducted by the employer, and return was filed by us accordingly in last assessment year. Kindly revert back as to the procedure for availing the said benefit of revised perquisite value of accommodation as 7.5% in place of 15 % for the FY April 2006 to March 2007. What all documents will be required, in case revised return is to be filed? — A. K. Bansal A. The revised return for the assessment year 2007-08 (financial year 2006-07) can be filed upto 31st March, 2009. There is no necessity to enclose any document in support of your claim as the rules notified by the Government are applicable w.e.f. 01.04.2006. Therefore, in case you are covered under the category where the perquisite value of accommodation is to be taken at 7.5% of the salary, you should re-compute your salary income and claim the refund in respect of excess deduction of tax at source by filing a revised return. In case the Assessing Officer makes any inquiry from you in this regard you can tender a reply inviting his attention to the amended rules. Division of family pension
Q. I am acting as a vice-principal in one of the prestigious school. My salary income is approximately Rs 6 lakh a year. My husband died about two years back. I am entitled to family pension on account of his death. I have two minor sons. Is it possible to divide the family pension into three equal parts? — Neelam Bhatia A. The answer to your query is based on the presumption that your husband died without making a Will. Therefore, in my opinion, the family pension is a property which will be inherited by all the legal heirs simultaneously in accordance with the provisions of the Hindu Succession Act 1956. Accordingly, you should be able to divide such pension in three parts for the taxability. You should, however, take care that this bifurcation actually takes place and 1/3 of family pension is received by your sons. I may, however, add that inspite of such division of family pension the income of minor children will be clubbed with your income in view of the provisions of Section 64(1A) of the Act. Premature payment of SCSS
Q. The main purpose of my raising the query was to ascertain whether penalty of 1 or 2% is leviable for premature payment to the surviving holder of joint account under the scheme of SCSS in case of death of either of the two joint holders. — Dev Raj Aggarwal A. According to the provisions of Senior Citizen Saving Schemes Rules 2004, in case of a death of a joint holder before the maturity of the deposit and where the spouse is a joint holder or sole nominee, the spouse is entitled to continue the account on the same terms and conditions on which the deposit had been made under the scheme. However, in case the spouse does not want to continue such joint account, the account can be closed by making an application in Form F and the deposit would be returned along with the interest as originally fixed because sub-clause (5) of clause 8 of the aforesaid scheme clarifies that in case of premature closure of an account at any time due to death of a depositor, no deduction towards the premature closure of the account would be made. |
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