Archives for August 2022

AHMEDABAD: As political parties gear up to fight the upcoming Assembly polls in the state, alcohol and drugs consumption is snowballing into a major issue. The Gujarat Congress staged a ‘dharna’ on Tuesday on the issue of liquor ban.

The recent hooch tragedy in the BJP-ruled state, wherein 50 people died and many fell ill after consuming spurious liquor, has brought embarrassment to the state leadership. Arvind Kejriwal latched on to the issue in his last two public addresses in the state.

“People of Gujarat have two options — they will get spurious liquor if they vote for them (BJP) or they will get employment if they vote for us,” he said on Monday. He also visited the kin of the victims of the hooch tragedy and sought compensation for them. 

Congress leaders have also started targeting the BJP on the illicit trade. Rahul Gandhi recently posted on social media figures of three drug recoveries allegedly worth around Rs 22,000 crore at Mundra port since September 2021 and questioned the law and order situation.

The Opposition’s attacks, and public anger over the menace, have prompted BJP to get into a damage control mode. Its state spokesperson Yamal Vyas said, “Gujarat ATS is doing a good job. Along with the Coast Guard, they have filed over 400 cases under the NDPS Act in six months. When Gujarat Police is doing such good work, what is the problem of Congress?”

AAP releases first list of 10 candidates

The AAP on Tuesday announced its first list of 10 candidates for Gujarat Assembly poll to be held in December. While Sagar Rabari has got Bechraji ticket, Arjun Rathwa will contest from Chhota Udaipur and Vashram Sagathia has got Rajkot Rural seat. Ram Dhaduk, Rajendra Solanki and Bhema Chaudhary will fight from Kamrej (Surat), Bardoli and Deodar, respectively.

BEIJING: China rolled out curbs Wednesday on the import of fruit and fish from Taiwan while halting shipments of sand to the island.

The trip by Pelosi, who is second in line to the presidency and the highest-profile elected US official to visit Taiwan in 25 years, has ignited a diplomatic firestorm. She landed late Tuesday in the wake of increasingly stark warnings from China, which considers the island a part of its territory to one day be reclaimed, by force if necessary.

China’s Customs Administration said Wednesday it would suspend some citrus fruit imports from Taiwan over alleged “repeated” detection of excessive pesticide residue, and the import of fish owing to positive coronavirus tests on packages.

In a separate notice, the Commerce Ministry added it would also “suspend the export of natural sand to Taiwan” from Wednesday, without providing details.

Natural sand is generally used for producing concrete and asphalt, and most of Taiwan’s imported sand and gravel comes from China.

The moves are part of a “common pattern for Beijing”, said Even Pay, an agriculture analyst at consultancy Trivium China. More disruptions of the agricultural and food trade can be expected in the coming days, she added.

“When diplomatic or trade tensions are running high, Chinese regulators typically take an extremely strict approach to compliance… looking for any issues that can be used to justify a trade ban,” she told AFP.

China is Taiwan’s biggest trading partner and export market, with bilateral trade growing 26 percent on year to $328 billion in 2021, official data shows. It is not the first time Beijing has taken aim at the island’s exports.

China banned pineapple imports in March 2021, citing the discovery of pests, in a move that was widely seen as politically driven. Beijing has ramped up pressure on Taiwan since President Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2016, as she views the island as a de facto sovereign nation and not part of “one China”.

On top of the latest bans, Taipei’s Council of Agriculture said Tuesday that China had cited regulatory breaches in suspending the import of other Taiwanese goods, including fishery products, tea and honey.

Meanwhile, Chinese authorities also announced planned live-fire military drills encircling Taiwan, in a move Taipei’s defence ministry said threatened key ports and urban areas.

At some points, the zone of Chinese operations will come within 20 kilometres (12.4 miles) of Taiwan’s shoreline, according to coordinates shared by the People’s Liberation Army. Taiwan’s 23 million people have long lived with the possibility of an invasion, but that threat has intensified under President Xi Jinping, China’s most assertive leader in a generation.

A record 72.42 lakh income tax returns were filed on the last day of such filing on July 31, taking the cumulative returns to 5.83 crore, near to the same levels of last year.

While initially income tax return (ITR) filing was slow, the pace picked up as the deadline neared.

“The surge of filing ITRs peaked on July 31, 2022 (due date for salaried taxpayers and other non-tax audit cases) with over 72.42 lakh ITRs being filed on a single day,” an official statement said.

The total ITRs filed till July 31, 2022 for assessment year 22-23 is about 5.83 crore, it said.

Last fiscal (2020-21), about 5.89 crore ITRs (Income Tax Returns) were filed by the extended due date of December 31, 2021.

Typically, return filers wait till the last day to file returns.

Over the last two financial years, the government had extended the deadline for filing ITRs to ease compliance for taxpayers battling Covid pandemic.

But this year the deadline was not extended by even by a day.

Through ITR, a person is supposed to submit to the Income Tax Department information about the income and the taxes due and paid on it during the year.

The Income Tax Department has prescribed 7 types of ITR forms, whose applicability will depend on the nature and amount of income and the type of taxpayer.

The tax department’s new income tax filing portal is now very robust to take the increased loads.

“The e-filing portal also set other benchmarks on July 31, 2022 including – highest per second rate of ITR filing: 570 (at 4:29:30 pm), highest per minute rate of ITR filing: 9573 (at 7:44 pm), and the highest per hour rate of ITR filing: 5,17,030, between 5 PM to 6 PM,” the statement said.

The initial pace of e-filing was relatively much slower with the first 1 crore ITRs for AY 22-23 being filed only by July 7.

The pace picked up marginally, with about 2.48 crore ITRs being filed by July 22.

“With the Government announcing that there would be no extension of the due date, there was a surge in filing of ITRs and by July 25, 2022, 3 crore ITRs had been filed. By the end of the day on 31st July,2022, 72.42 lakh ITRs had been filed, shattering all previous records (maximum being 49 lakh ITRs in 2019). In the month of July, 2022 alone, over 5.13 crore ITRs have been filed,” it said.

Out of 5.83 crore ITRs filed for AY 2022-23, 50 per cent of these are ITR-1 (2.93 crore), 11.5 per cent are ITR-2 (67 lakh), 10.9 per cent are ITR-3 (63.35 lakh) and 26 per cent are ITR-4 (1.54 crore).

“The number of ITRs filed during working hours (9 AM-6 PM) since 7th July, 2022 to 31st July, 2022 is around 3.31 crore, which is 58.77% of the total ITRs filed,” it said.

“Over 47% of these ITRs have been filed using the online ITR form on the portal and the balance have been uploaded using the ITR created from the offline software utilities.” 

Large number of taxpayers did their due diligence by comparing data of their income by viewing their Annual Information Statement (AIS) and Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS). A high rate of usage of AIS/TIS data was reflected by the fact that more than 5.03 crore taxpayers viewed/downloaded their AIS.

This year a large portion of the data for ITR-1 was already prefilled with salary, interest and dividend income making compliance easier for taxpayers.

For other ITRs 2, 3, 4, apart from this data, property details for rental income, brought forward losses, MAT credit was also pre-filled to further ease compliance for taxpayers.