Govt to set up National Tax Tribunal
New Delhi: The Indian government will set up National Tax Tribunal to uniformly interpret and implement the Income Tax Act and to establish 50 additional benches of appellate tribunals for expediting tax cases. It will will also appoint a tax ombudsman for resolving tax disputes. Announcin this, and in a bid to remove the fear of search and seizures from the minds of tax payers, Finance Minister Jaswant Singh said: “I have instructed that searches should be authorised only where credible evidence of substantial tax evasion exists. Search and seizure is to be resorted to with great care and utmost caution and to be undertaken only with orders from director general (investigations)."

He said it has been decided to introduce 50 additional benches of the income-tax appellate tribunal in consultation with the law ministry to ensure disposal of cases within six months. For making the compounding taxation regime milder, Singh announced reduction in compounding fees. "These guidelines are a little restrictive and prosecutions are launched even for technical breaches,” he said adding there were 27,000 cases pending on this account alone.
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Govt opposed to multilateral investment pact
New Delhi: The central government is against the proposed multilateral agreement on investment within the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and its apprehensions have not been cleared in the clarification process. This was indicated by India’s ambassador to the WTO, K M Chandrasekhar, at a recent seminar on investment organised by Actionaid-TVC in London. Most Third World countries, including India, will not be in a position to enter the negotiations without a clear picture of the structure and content of each issue, he said.

This view was expressed by trade ministers from the African union in the Mauritius declaration adopted on 28 June, by the trade ministers of the least developed countries at the Dhaka declaration on 26 June, by the trade ministers from eastern and southern African nations and in the Nairobi declaration on 28 May and by various other developing countries through interventions and papers, he added. “There is no serious attempt to engage in debate and address concerns. At this stage, it is obviously inopportune to press for a multilateral agreement on investment, when there are other more important issues for consideration of the WTO such as the development issues and the market access issues. There is no government in the world that did not place its foreign investment policy under constant review and made changes that were necessary to promote FDI."
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