1) “E-Sahyog”
- Pilot Project of The Income-Tax Department to Facilitate Taxpayers
- Aimed at reducing compliance cost, especially for small taxpayers. The objective of “e-Sahyog” is to provide an online mechanism to resolve mismatches in Income-tax returns of those assesses whose returns have been selected for scrutiny, without visiting the Income Tax Office. Under this initiative the Department will provide an end to end e-service using SMS, e-mails to inform the tax assesses of the mismatch. The taxpayers will simply need to visit the e-filing portal and log in with their user-ID and password to view mismatch related information and submit online response on the issue. The responses submitted online by the taxpayers will be processed and if the response and other information are found satisfactory as per automated closure rules, the issue will be treated as closed. The taxpayers can check the updated status by logging in to the e-filing portal.
2)Infantry Day Celebrations on 27 Oct 2015
- Infantry celebrates 27 Oct each year as the Infantry Day. On this day (27 Oct 1947), 68 years ago the leading elements of the Indian Army from 1st Battalion of the Sikh Regiment landed in Srinagar as part force to evict the Pakistani intruders from Jammu and Kashmir which became part of the Indian Union following the signing of Instrument of Accession by Maharaja Hari Singh. Their resolute defence of the city saved it from falling into the enemy hands. The gallant action of these Infantry Soldiers reversed the tide of the battle and contributed immensely towards integrating Kashmir as part of independent India.
3)SLINEX –
- Extensive maritime interaction, the Indian and Sri Lankan Navies would undertake the 4th edition of Sri Lanka-India Exercise (SLINEX) off Trincomalee, Sri Lanka from 27 Oct to 01 Nov 15. SLINEX series of bilateral maritime exercises were initiated in 2005 and since then three successful engagements have been conducted.
4)Eating red meat can cause cancer – WHO
- Eating processed meat can lead to bowel cancer in humans while red meat is a likely cause of the disease, World Health Organisation (WHO) experts said on Monday in findings that could sharpen debate over the merits of a meat-based diet.
- The France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the WHO, put processed meat such as hot dogs and ham in its group 1 list, which already includes tobacco, asbestos and diesel fumes, for which there is “sufficient evidence” of cancer links
- Red meat, under which the IARC includes beef, lamb and pork, was classified as a “probable” carcinogen in its group 2A list that also contains glyphosate, the active ingredient in many weed-killers.
5)First trial to use umbilical cord stem cells to cure HIV
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The world’s first clinical trial which aims to cure five HIV patients within three years using transplants of blood from umbilical cords is set to start in Spain.
The project seeks to be the world’s first clinical trial of its kind by recreating the success of Timothy Ray Brown — the only living person ever to be completely cured of HIV, known as “the Berlin patient”.
Plans for the clinical trial were announced last week at a haematology conference in Valencia by Spain’s National Organisation of Transplants
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“The Berlin patient”, Brown, was an HIV-positive American living in Berlin in 2006 when he was diagnosed with leukemia.
He needed a transplant to treat the cancer, so his doctor decided to use a donor with a certain cellular mutation that is resistant to HIV.
After Brown received two stem cell transplants from the donor’s bone marrow, his levels of HIV decreased dramatically.
He is now cancer-free and only traces of the virus can found, but they cannot reproduce.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.