8200 - All you need to know about tax returns - Live Mint

All you need to know about tax returns

The tax authority has introduced a new set of forms for filing returns; it is important to fill the correct one

Vivina Vishwanathan 

Pradeep Gaur/Mint

It is that time of the year when you get your Form 16 from your employer and gear up to file income tax returns (ITR) for the financial year gone by. This year the government has come out with a new ITR form. Also there is more to disclose while filing returns—you need to provide your passport number and details of all bank accounts, among others. “This time when you file returns, you will have to pay very close attention to the information you submit such as disclosing all bank account details and details of your foreign assets. Ordinarily resident taxpayers need to be careful as they are required to provide detailed information about their overseas income or assets in view of enlargement of the scope of reporting in schedule FA (foreign assets) to Form ITR-2,” said Kuldip Kumar, partner and leader-personal tax, PwC.

Despite all the changes in the ITR forms and details that you need to submit, you can still file ITR on your own. Mint Money takes you through the details of who needs to file returns, documents required, how to pick the right form and how to file it.

Who needs to file return?

Any individual who has a taxable income should file tax return. Currently, if you are below the age of 60 and have an annual income of up to Rs.2.5 lakh, you are exempt from tax. Any income above Rs.2.5 lakh is taxable. If you have taxable income, you have to file the return irrespective of whether you have paid taxes or not. “As per section 139 of the Income-tax Act, 1961, an individual would be required to file the India tax return in the following cases—if the total income (i.e., before claiming any specified deductions under chapter VIA of the Act) is more than the basic exemption limit prescribed for a particular financial year; individuals qualifying as ordinarily resident of India and hold any assets (including financial interest in any entity) located outside India or signing authority in any account located outside India or individual who has incurred loss under the head income from house property, business profession, capital gains or other sources, has to file a tax return in order to carry forward and set-off of such losses in the subsequent financial years,” said Parizad Sirwalla, partner (tax), KPMG. Remember that tax slab varies for senior and very senior citizens. “In case of an individual who is of the age of 60 years or more at any time during the financial year, the limit is set at Rs.3 lakh a year, while in case of an individual above the age of 80 years, the limit is set at Rs.5 lakh,” said Rakesh Nangia, managing partner, Nangia and Co.

Identify source of income

Every income that you earn has been defined under the income tax law for tax purposes. Depending on the source of income, the I-T department has structured ITR forms. In order to pick the right form to file returns, you need to identify income as defined by the I-T department.

“The source of income can be identified based on documents such as bank statements, Form 16/Form 16A, Form 26AS and overseas tax return,” said Sirwalla. For instance, as per I-T law, salary income is salary received from employer, pension, gratuity, perquisite and profit in lieu of salary. Any rental income on let out house property or deemed let out property (in case of more than one house property) is known as income from house property. Then there are income from capital gains, business income and income from other sources. “Income from profit or gains of business or profession are those income from trade and commerce or speculation income. Income from capital gains is income from sale or transfer of shares, mutual fund units and movable or immovable property. Income from other sources is any income earned in the form of director fees, dividend income, interest income (except banking business), lottery income and gains from horse race,” said Sirwalla.

Checklist of documents

Whether you file your income tax return on your own or take help from a chartered accountant, you need to collect all important documents for filing return. You don’t have to submit any of the documents while filing returns. However, you will have to keep it handy for filling the ITR forms. In case you attach any of the documents with your ITR form, the I-T department will detach the additional document and send it back to you. “The list is long, however, the basic documents you need to keep handy are Form 16, Aadhaar details, passport number, details of all bank accounts such as Indian Financial System Code (IFSC) and account number, investment proofs, income proofs, evidence of rent and details of income of minor if clubbed in your ITR,” said Homi B. Mistry, partner, Deloitte Haskins & Sells LLP. (See table)

This year, the number of disclosure of your personal details has increased compared with last year for filing returns. For instance, if you have an Aadhaar card number, you have to provide the details if you are filing ITR-1, ITR-2, ITR-2A or ITR-4S. However, the disclosure of Aadhaar details is optional. “Aadhaar number may be used for electronic verification code system and in such a case, signed ITR-V is not required to be sent to the Central Processing Centre at Bengaluru,” said Kumar. Another example is disclosure of passport number, if available. You have to disclose passport number if you are filling ITR-2 or ITR-2A. This year you also have to disclose details of all the bank accounts excluding accounts that have been non-operational for over three years held in India at any time during the previous year if you are filling ITR-1, ITR-2, ITR-2A or ITR-4S. “The details include—total number of accounts held, IFSC of the bank, name of the bank, account number, and indicate the bank account in which the taxpayer prefers to get the refund,” said Kumar. You don’t have to disclose your bank balance.

Picking the right form

Once you have identified your income and have pulled out all the necessary documents for filing returns, the next step is to identify the right ITR form. You should report the income and tax payment details for the previous financial year in appropriate tax return forms. This year the government has introduced a new form and has also reworked the existing one. Here is a look at the ITR forms that individuals have to fill.

ITR-1: ITR-1, also known as Sahaj, is to be filled by individuals whose total income for the assessment year 2015-16 includes income from salary or pension or income from one house property excluding cases where loss is brought forward from previous years, or income from other sources excluding winning from lottery and income from race horses. Unlike earlier, individuals having exempt income, from say dividend income or interest income from provident fund, of more than Rs.5,000 can use ITR-1.

However, individuals having agricultural income exceeding Rs.5,000 will still not be able to use ITR-1.

“ITR-1 cannot be used if agricultural income exceeds Rs.5,000; if there is income from business or profession; in case of income from sources outside India; relief is claimed under section 90 or section 91 of the Act read with double taxation avoidance agreement (DTAA) or having assets (including financial interest in any entity) outside India or signing authority in any account located outside India and in case of income from capital gains,” said Sirwalla.

ITR-2: This form has to be filled by individuals and Hindu Undivided Families (HUFs) having income from more than one house property and capital gains from stocks or mutual funds. “This return form can be used by individuals and HUFs whose total income includes income from salary or pension, income from house property, income from capital gains, income from other sources including winning from lottery and income from race horses, and individuals who qualify as ordinarily resident in India having overseas income or assets,” said Kumar. Individuals and HUFs that have business income should not use ITR-2.

ITR-2A: This form has been introduced this year. ITR-2A is to be filled by those who have salary income and income from more than one house property but do not have any capital gains accruing to them or any foreign asset. “If you have income from salary or pension, income from house property (even if more than one house property, brought forward loss from earlier financial years or carry forward loss to subsequent financial year), income from other sources (including lottery income, gains or loss from horse races) you can use this form,” said Sirwalla. You can’t use the form if you have income from business or profession, or income from sources outside India or relief is claimed under section 90 or section 91 of the Act read with DTAA or having assets (including financial interest in any entity) outside India or signing authority in any account located outside India or income from capital gains.

ITR-4S (Sugam): If you have income from business on presumptive basis and salary or pension, income from one house property except loss is brought forward from earlier financial years, income from other sources excluding lottery income, gains or loss from race horses, you can use ITR-4S (Sugam). This form can’t be used if you have income from speculative business, income from sources outside India, relief is claimed under section 90 or section 91 of the Act read with DTAA or have assets (including financial interest in any entity) outside India or signing authority in any account located outside India or income from capital gains.

Conclusion

Do remember that the deadline for filing return this year is 31 August. If you have income over Rs.5 lakh, it is mandatory to e-file. Read more about the process of filing tax return online and how to do it without mistakes further in our package.

8199 - IRCTC to do a security audit of its ticketing system - dna

IRCTC to do a security audit of its ticketing system

Sunday, 28 June 2015 - 7:55am IST | Agency: dna | From the print edition

Binoo Nair
Follow @NairBinoo

The NGET, officials claimed, is a revamped interface of the website with user-friendly features, such as fast login and better ticket booking environment.

Lakhs of passengers who log on to the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website every day to reserve train tickets have something to cheer about.

The IRCTC has decided to ramp up its e-ticketing operations by hiring services of Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) for a security audit of its next generation e-ticketing system (NGET). The STQC is an entity attached to the Centre's department of electronics and information technology.

"A security audit will help IRCTC ensure that vulnerabilities, if any, in its e-ticketing system are detected and addressed and the web application and IT Infrastructure devices are free from any glitches," said Sandip Dutta, manager, public relations, IRCTC.

The NGET, officials claimed, is a revamped interface of the website with user-friendly features, such as fast login and better ticket booking environment.

The plan for a security audit, railway officials said, is the need of the hour. dna has run a series of articles on a touting racket — possibly the biggest in the country — where people used 'speed software' to corner tickets on the website. The scam, which came to light after several arrests last September, had shown the extent to which those arrested had been toying with the website. Railways retrieved 4,782 tickets worth over Rs2 crore as part of the scam.

Investigations by Central Railway's commercial department and the Railway Protection Force into the scam showed that touts were using the software to circumvent IRCTC's 'captcha' (acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart), a process used in computing to determine whether the user is human or not. They even knew the intervals after which the IRCTC system accepted a ticket request.

"This made the system strengthening immaterial for the touts, allowing them to theoretically fill in up to 128 tickets per minute from a single computer. Using a high-speed data connection and 10 computers, these touts built up a capacity of generating 10 times that number in a single minute. It is mind-blogging the way the system was being subverted," said a senior railway official.

IRCTC has around 3 crore registered users and the number is increasing by more than 15,000 new registrations a day.

Aadhaar on IRCTC soon?
In a press statement, IRCTC said it was planning to make Aadhaar card mandatory for its user registration process for e-ticketing. This will ensure that users registering on the website are properly identified through the Aadhaar card number verification, the statement said. Currently, the new user registration is done through verification of the customer's phone number and e-mail ID by sending the user an OTP (one-time password).

dna reports on the scam
October 6, 2014: Key IRCTC officer under scanner in ticket touting scam
October 9, 2014: Mirror websites of IRCTC help corner tickets
October 11, 2014: Touts knew ins and outs of IRCTC system
October 21, 2014: Country's largest touting scam loses pace

8198 - Should You Trust The Government Run DigiLocker? We Asked A Security Expert To Weigh In - Huffington Post

Should You Trust The Government Run DigiLocker? We Asked A Security Expert To Weigh In

HuffPost India  |  By Sriram SharmaEm

DigiLocker, a government-run free personal storage service provider available to Aadhar account holders announced that it had over 1.5 lakh registrations since its launch in February 2015.

Despite the limited storage space provided (10 MB), DigiLocker has received 28,317 registrations from Madhya Pradesh, followed by Uttar Pradesh (20,771) and Maharashtra (17,601).

If you’re an Aadhar card holder, should you use this facility over Dropbox or Google Drive, or any of the free and open source encryption tools available? We posed this question to Saket Modi, CEO of Lucideus, an IIT Bombay incubated IT security services company that advises businesses and institutions. Their clients include the Indian government, tech companies and banks.

Saket believes that Indians should be much more comfortable when their own government is providing a service free of cost, and welcomes the initiative. He said that the service is not really about encryption, it’s more comparable to Google Drive, or OneDrive by Microsoft, which provide online storage, while apps like Truelocker and Bitlocker help encrypt data on a local storage device.

“Technologically, there’s no difference between DigiLocker and Google Drive, and despite the NSA revelations by Snowden, for me, the US government is not as scary as Google or Facebook, which are private, profit-making companies that can go any extent to make money.” he said. 

“They’re all giving you storage, but we are compromising on our privacy. It’s a very big trade-off. When our government provides us something, the intent is not to store movies or media, but personal identifiable information, like PAN Card, Income tax documents, are quite sensitive and vulnerable to identity theft.” he added.

Saket had a useful tip to simplify privacy in the internet age. 

“Only attach to your emails and your online drives media that you are okay with sharing with the world. Assume that whatever you have put on Google Drive is already breached. The online world becomes a simpler place when you think like that.” he said.

In an age where password managers get hacked, would you trust an Indian government-run website with your data? 

“It’s no longer true that Indian security lacks the technical competence that is required, versus their European and North-American counterparts.” he said

8197 - The battle between surveillance, security and the right to privacy - Irish Times

The battle between surveillance, security and the right to privacy

The bargain you make, again and again, with various companies is surveillance in exchange for free service

Bruce Schneier: “We’re all open books to both governments and corporations; their ability to peer into our collective personal lives is greater than it has ever been before”

First published:

Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 01:55

A decade ago, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties cautioned that the mobile phone was in essence, the equivalent of a personal tracking device, recording data on every user’s movements every few moments, throughout the day and night.

Thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden, we now know that such data has been gathered in bulk, secretly, by agencies like Government Communications Headquarters(GCHQ) in the UK and the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US. Only last week, Sky News revealed that police and surveillance agencies in the UK are using fake phone masts and spying technologies known as IMSI catchers and Stingrays to track people without their knowledge or use of a warrant.

Security expert, cryptologist and author Bruce Schneier has long believed this is unacceptable. People not only have a right to privacy, he argues, but such untargeted, mass surveillance does not and never has achieved the security goals used to justify it. Business data-gathering is equally compromising and egregious.

In this excerpt from his new book Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World, he argues that commonplace technologies such as the phone give governments and corporations unprecedented opportunities for mass surveillance.

BOOK EXTRACT

If you need to be convinced that you’re living in a science-fiction world, look at your cell phone. This cute, sleek, incredibly powerful tool has become so central to our lives that we take it for granted. It seems perfectly normal to pull this device out of your pocket, no matter where you are on the planet, and use it to talk to someone else, no matter where the person is on the planet.

Yet every morning when you put your cell phone in your pocket, you’re making an implicit bargain with the carrier: “I want to make and receive mobile calls; in exchange, I allow this company to know where I am at all times.”

The bargain isn’t specified in any contract, but it’s inherent in how the service works. You probably hadn’t thought about it, but now that I’ve pointed it out, you might well think it’s a pretty good bargain. Cell phones really are great and they can’t work unless the cell phone companies know where you are, which means they keep you under their surveillance.

This is a very intimate form of surveillance. Your cell phone tracks where you live and where you work. It tracks where you like to spend your weekends and evenings. It tracks how often you go to church (and which church), how much time you spend in a bar and whether you speed when you drive. It tracks – since it knows about all the other phones in your area – whom you spend your days with, whom you meet for lunch and whom you sleep with.

The accumulated data can probably paint a better picture of how you spend your time than you can, because it doesn’t have to rely on human memory. In 2012, researchers were able to use this data to predict where people would be 24 hours later, to within 20 metres.

Before cell phones, if someone wanted to know all of this, he would have had to hire a private investigator to follow you around taking notes. Now that job is obsolete; the cell phone in your pocket does all of this automatically. It might be that no one retrieves that information, but it is there for the taking.

Your location information is valuable and everyone wants access to it. The police want it. Cell phone location analysis is useful in criminal investigations in several different ways. The police can “ping” a particular phone to determine where it is, use historical data to determine where it has been and collect all the cell phone location data from a specific area to figure out who was there and when. More and more, police are using this data for exactly these purposes.

Governments also use this same data for intimidation and social control. In 2014, the government of Ukraine sent this positively Orwellian text message to people in Kiev whose phones were at a certain place during a certain time period: “Dear subscriber, you have been registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.” Don’t think this behaviour is limited to totalitarian countries; in 2010, Michigan police sought information about every cell phone in service near an expected labour protest. They didn’t bother getting a warrant first.

There’s a whole industry devoted to tracking you in real time. Companies use your phone to track you in stores to learn how you shop, track you on the road to determine how close you might be to a particular store and deliver advertising to your phone based on where you are right now.

Your location data is so valuable that cell phone companies are now selling it to data brokers, who in turn resell it to anyone willing to pay for it. Companies like Sense Networks specialise in using this data to build personal profiles of each of us.

Phone companies are not the only source of cell phone data. The US company Verintsells cell phone tracking systems to both corporations and governments worldwide. The company’s website says that it’s “a global leader in Actionable Intelligence solutions for customer engagement optimisation, security intelligence, and fraud, risk and compliance,” with clients in “more than 10,000 organisations in over 180 countries .

The UK company Cobham sells a system that allows someone to send a “blind” call to a phone – one that doesn’t ring and isn’t detectable. The blind call forces the phone to transmit on a certain frequency, allowing the sender to track that phone to within one meter. The company boasts government customers in Algeria, Brunei, Ghana, Pakistan,Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the United States.

Defentek, a company mysteriously registered in Panama, sells a system that can “locate and track any phone number in the world . . . undetected and unknown by the network, carrier or the target.” It’s not an idle boast; telecommunications researcher Tobias Engel demonstrated the same thing at a hacker conference in 2008. Criminals do the same today.

All this location tracking is based on the cellular system. There’s another entirely different and more accurate location system built into your smartphone: GPS. This is what provides location data to the various apps running on your phone. Some apps use location data to deliver service – Google Maps, Uber, Yelp. Others, like Angry Birds, just want to be able to collect and sell it.

You can do this, too. HelloSpy is an app that you can surreptitiously install on someone else’s smartphone to track him or her. Perfect for an anxious mother wanting to spy on her teenager or an abusive man wanting to spy on his wife or girlfriend. Employers have used apps like this to spy on their employees.

The US National Security Agency (NSA) and its UK counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), use location data to track people. The NSA collects cell phone location data from a variety of sources: the cell towers that phones connect to, the location of wifi networks that phones log on to and GPS location data from internet apps. Two of the NSA’s internal databases, code-named HAPPYFOOT and FASCIA, contain comprehensive location information of devices worldwide. The NSA uses the databases to track people’s movements, identify people who associate with people of interest and target drone strikes.

The NSA can allegedly track cell phones even when they are turned off.

I’ve just been talking about location information from one source – your cell phone – but the issue is far larger than this. The computers you interact with are constantly producing intimate personal data about you. It includes what you read, watch and listen to. It includes whom you talk to and what you say. Ultimately, it covers what you’re thinking about, at least to the extent that your thoughts lead you to the internet and search engines. We are living in the golden age of surveillance.

Sun Microsystems’ chief executive Scott McNealy said it plainly way back in 1999: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.” He’s wrong about how we should react to surveillance, of course, but he’s right that it’s becoming harder and harder to avoid surveillance and maintain privacy.

Surveillance is a politically and emotionally loaded term, but I use it deliberately. The US military defines surveillance as “systematic observation”. As I’ll explain, modern-day electronic surveillance is exactly that. We’re all open books to both governments and corporations; their ability to peer into our collective personal lives is greater than it has ever been before.

The bargain you make, again and again, with various companies is surveillance in exchange for free service. Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt and its director of ideasJared Cohen laid it out in their 2013 book, The New Digital Age. Here I’m paraphrasing their message: if you let us have all your data, we will show you advertisements you want to see and we’ll throw in free web search, email and all sorts of other services. It’s convenience, basically. We are social animals and there’s nothing more powerful or rewarding than communicating with other people.

Digital means have become the easiest and quickest way to communicate. And why do we allow governments access? Because we fear the terrorists, fear the strangers abducting our children, fear the drug dealers, fear whatever bad guy is in vogue at the moment. That’s the NSA’s justification for its mass-surveillance programs; if you let us have all of your data, we’ll relieve your fear.

The problem is that these aren’t good or fair bargains, at least as they’re structured today. We’ve been accepting them too easily and without really understanding the terms.

Here is what’s true. Today’s technology gives governments and corporations robust capabilities for mass surveillance. Mass surveillance is dangerous. It enables discrimination based on almost any criteria: race, religion, class, political beliefs. It is being used to control what we see, what we can do and, ultimately, what we say.

It is being done without offering citizens recourse or any real ability to opt out and without any meaningful checks and balances. It makes us less safe. It makes us less free. The rules we had established to protect us from these dangers under earlier technological regimes are now woefully insufficient; they are not working. We need to fix that and we need to do it very soon.

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier is published by WW Norton & Co and available in hardback at £17.99

8196 - Digital locker service - The Hindu

COIMBATORE, June 27, 2015

Digital locker service

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Participants at ICTACT Bridge 2015 got an opportunity to know more about DigiLocker, a new service to be launched shortly by the Union Government.

At the stall set up at the event for DigiLocker, participants who had the Aadhaar number could sign in and create their locker space for free. Those who had not linked their mobile number to the Aadhaar could use their finger print for signing in.

The locker is a dedicated personal storage space for e-documents provided by the Government and is linked to the Aadhaar.

For details of the service, log on to:www.digitallocker.gov.in

8195 - Common Service Centres issue 1.31 lakh certificates - The Hindu

TIRUNELVELI, June 27, 2015

Common Service Centres issue 1.31 lakh certificates

• SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Ease of access:Collector M. Karunakaran (right) handing over plastic Aadhar card at the e-service centre on the Collectorate premises on Friday.— Photo: A. SHAIKMOHIDEEN

Move to ensure hassle-free distribution of various certificates

The Common Service Centres across the district have so far issued 1,31,786 certificates to the public, particularly to the students pursuing higher studies.

To ensure hassle-free distribution of community, nativity, income, first generation graduate and deserted women certificates, the district administration introduced common service centres across the district through which the applicants got the certificates required after submitting relevant applications there.

The Tamil Nadu Arasu Cable Television Corporation, on its part, has opened e-service centres in all taluks where these centres issue plastic Aadhar cards. Formally inaugurating the distribution of plastic Aadhaar cards to the public at the e-service centre on the Collectorate premises on Friday, Dr. Karunakaran said the Tamil Nadu Arasu Cable Television Corporation’s e-service centres, which had been established in all taluks (except the newly formed Kadayanallur taluk office), were issuing a range of certificates to the public without troubling the applicants.

Moreover, payment of electricity bills, mobile phone recharge, addition and deletion of names in the electoral roll, online submission of passport applications, etc., were being done at the centres.

Those who had received their Aadhaar cards should tell the Aadhaar number and pay Rs. 30 for getting the plastic Aadhaar card.

Those who had got only the 14-digit acknowledgement number after their iris and fingerprints were scanned and were waiting for the card should pay Rs. 40 for getting the plastic card.

“After issue of plastic Aadhaar card commenced through the Tamil Nadu Arasu Cable Television Corporation’s e-service centres across the district, 513 plastic cards have been issued to the applicants. Since the centres will be functioning between 9.45 a.m. and 5.45 p.m. except on Sundays and government holidays, the public should utilise the services,” Dr. Karunakaran said.

On the performance of the Common Service Centres in the taluk offices under the administration of revenue department, the Collector said these centres had so far distributed 36,115 community certificates, 34,109 nativity certificates, 54,431 income certificates, 92 first generation graduate certificates and 11 deserted women certificates.

Tamil Nadu Arasu Cable Television Corporation Tahsildar Nagarajan accompanied the Collector.

8194 - Nandan Nilekani may quit Congress to focus on education initiative - TNN

Nandan Nilekani may quit Congress to focus on education initiative

TNN | Jun 27, 2015, 02.22AM IST

While the UPA government sort of dumped Aadhaar — after launching and backing it — ahead of the general elections, the Narendra Modi government adopted it and made it the linchpin of its direct benefits transfer scheme.

BENGALURU: Former Aadhaar chairman and Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani is expected to shortly quit the Congress to focus on a nationwide education initiative — EkStep — he has been working on for a while now, according to sources. 

Nilekani, perhaps the biggest non-political name to join the Congress ahead of last year's Lok Sabha elections, had lost from Bangalore South to H N Ananth Kumar (BJP). Nilekani, who spearheaded UPA-2's Aadhaar project, which aims to provide every Indian with a 12-digit unique identity number, has neither been used by the Congress government in Karnataka nor by the central leadership since the party's stunning loss in 2014. 

He didn't respond to text messages and calls about the move. 

While the UPA government sort of dumped Aadhaar — after launching and backing it — ahead of the general elections, the Narendra Modi government adopted it and made it the linchpin of its direct benefits transfer scheme. 

In the initial days of the NDA government, when Aadhaar was on shaky ground, Nilekani had sought a meeting with Modi and convinced him of the benefits of retaining the scheme. He reportedly highlighted the enormous savings that would accrue to the government by plugging leakages in the delivery of various subsidies by dealing directly with the beneficiaries of the state's burgeoning welfare programmes. Today, it's a firm part of the NDA's JAM (Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) strategy. 

EkStep, Nilekani's primary education initiative, aims to help children in the 5-12 age group, especially first-generation learners, in reading and maths using technology. "The goal is to create a learning tool that will be available on devices such as smartphones and tablets for millions of children in their environment, be it home, school or tuition centre," says the not-for-profit's website. 

Nilekani believes "a social problem at scale requires a collaborative approach and technology is a necessary enabler". 

The solutions provided by EkStep will complement and augment existing education resources. The approach is to build an open source technology platform and a collaborative ecosystem of parents, teachers, educationists, technologists, content developers, scientists and researchers to solve a specific problem of learning, at scale.

8193 - Few turn up for Aadhaar-voter ID linking - TNN

Few turn up for Aadhaar-voter ID linking

Sarang Dastane, TNN | Jun 27, 2015, 04.15AM IST

PUNE: Only 2.33 lakh of the 69 lakh voters in the district have submitted applications to link their unique identification (Aadhaar) numbers to their voter identity cards so far, officials from the district election branch said.

Since last month, the district election office has initiated a drive to assist voters to link their Aadhaar number. However, with less than 4% voters having submitted their details, the administration now faces an uphill task to meet the target of maximum enrolment in the next one month.

A senior official from the election branch said, "The initiative has not received the expected response. We have appealed to voters to submit their Aadhaar details by following a simple procedure. Voters only have to visit the nearest polling station with a photocopy of their Aadhaar cards. Even if they don't have a voter ID card, they can submit the Aadhaar details to the election officials."

People can also upload their details online, by logging onto the national voters' service portal. The website provides a mobile number for further assistance.

The administration has also announced a daylong drive on Sunday for voters to submit Aadhaar details at their nearest polling station between 10am and 5pm. A similar facility will also be available at the offices of returning officers of the respective assembly constituencies.

Such a drive was conducted in May and will also be taken up in July, officials said. As per the latest report, of the 2.33 lakh applications received so far, the administration has uploaded details of 93,000 voters.

8192 - Editorial: A less unequal India - Financial Express

Editorial: A less unequal India

Agriculture growth at the heart of the change

By: The Financial Express | June 26, 2015 12:09 am

While close to a third of rural India continues to remain poor—the first national Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) puts the number at 31.26% for 2013—there are several pieces of good news coming out from this and associated data as well. For one, unlike in the past where poverty numbers were estimates based on the National Sample Survey data, leaving each state to come out with its list, the SECC is a lot more rigorous and is based, as the name suggests, on a census, not a sample. It has been subject to rigorous cross-checking with the data put out in the public to invite objections from those in each locality, for instance. Second, with the states agreeing to the lists, this means there is now a national list of poor people for 2012-13. With this list now final—it will be made public next month—it can be matched against the Aadhaar database and, at a later date, linked to bank as well as post office accounts. None of this is a simple task. The Aadhaar database, for instance, has more or less been cleaned up but the quality of the Jan-Dhan accounts is suspect in the sense that this has not been matched against the Aadhaar database, nor has it been linked to the SECC database. That exercise will now have to be done, and could take anywhere up to a year. But, should the government decide, it will be physically possible to give out cash subsidies within a year’s time.

The other piece of good news comes from comparing NCAER’s NSHIE survey of 2004-05 with the 2013-14 ICE survey conducted by Rajesh Shukla, the driving force behind NCAER’s NSHIE surveys. While NSHIE shows an income Gini coefficient of 0.466, ICE shows a Gini of 0.386, which means a substantial fall in inequality. The reason for this, in statistical terms, is that the share of the bottom quintile in India’s income has risen from 5.2% to 6.6% while that of the top quintile has fallen from 52.7% to 46.1%. The reason for this is simple: the last decade has been one of high agriculture growth, so the poor benefited a lot. Between FY03 and FY12—the data series changed after that—for instance, annual agriculture growth averaged 4.3%. More important, agriculture growth was very high in states with high levels of poverty—in other words, a double-pronged attack on poverty. Madhya Pradesh which has a 31.6% poverty ratio had an annual agriculture growth of 10.2% over the past decade while Jharkhand which has 37% poor people witnessed a 9.2% growth. Also, across the country, there was a large shift towards non-farm labour as well—the proportion of households who were engaged in only agriculture was 56% of total rural households a decade ago based on the NSHIE data and is 36% based on the ICE data—which has also resulted in income share of the bottom quintile rising. This shift is also intuitively obvious when you look at the sharp rise in rural wages over the past few years. While it is true rural India is not the same as agriculture—according to ICE, 60% of rural income comes from non-agriculture—the catch here is that with agriculture growth slowing to the 1.7% it has over the last three years, a large part of the falling-inequality miracle will fade away.

8191 - Now, get SMS alerts on train cancellations - Hindu Businessline

Now, get SMS alerts on train cancellations

OUR BUREAU

Aadhaar card to be made mandatory for online reservation

NEW DELHI, JUNE 25:  

The Railway Ministry has started a passenger-friendly measure on a pilot basis, under which SMS alerts will be sent on train cancellations.

Under the pilot project, the SMS messages are sent to passengers who board at the originating station. At a later stage, this will be extended to cover en-route stations, too. This service has been commenced on all-India basis. The SMS will be sent to mobile numbers entered by passengers in the reservation slips while buying tickets from PRS counters or online e-tickets. The cancellation information will be sent in advance to help passengers plan accordingly.

The software for this service has been developed by Centre for Railway Information Systems, the information technology wing of the Indian Railways, an official release said.

Mandatory Aadhaar

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) also plans to make Aadhaar card mandatory for its user registration process for e-ticketing. This will ensure that users registering on the IRCTC website are properly identified for their identity and address through the Aadhaar card number verification.

However, if implemented, this move may go against the Supreme Court’s ruling that Aadhaar card is not compulsory and officials who insist on them will be taken to task for violation of its interim order in September 2013 that “no person should suffer for not getting the Aadhaar card, in spite of the fact that some authority had issued a circular making it mandatory”.

In a related move, IRCTC has decided to ramp up its e-ticketing operations by hiring the services of Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification for conducting the security audit of its Next Generation E-Ticketing System. As part of this, STQC will conduct the Web application security and vulnerability assessment of servers and devices that are part of its e-ticketing operations hosted at irctc.co.in. The STQC Directorate is an attached office of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology.

(This article was published on June 25, 2015

8190 - Haryana bets on computerisation to stop revenue leakage, improve financial stance

Haryana bets on computerisation to stop revenue leakage, improve financial stance

By PTI | 25 Jun, 2015, 08.50PM IST

"We are trying to improve financial position of the state through computerization, which will help in stopping leakage and pilferage," Haryana Finance Minister Captain Abhimanyu said. 

CHANDIGARH: Haryana government today said it is trying to improve "poor" financial position of the state by stopping revenue leakage through large scale computerisation in government departments. 

"We are trying to improve financial position of the state through computerization, online tendering etc which will help in stopping leakage and pilferage," Haryana Finance Minister Captain Abhimanyu said here today. 

Read more at:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/47818953.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

8189 - AngelPrime & HackerEarth declare Aadhaar hackathon’s winners - Medianama

AngelPrime & HackerEarth declare Aadhaar hackathon’s winners

By Sneha Johari ( @thejunebug ) on June 26, 2015

VC fund AngelPrime has declared the winners of its online Aadhaar hackathon which was held on June 6 and 7. 

AngelPrime said that Aadhaar APIs like biometric, eKYC, demographic, OTP and OTP eKYC authentications were exposed to developers along with the provision of USB based biometric sensors and their Windows and Android SDKs from Morpho. Khosla Labs also opened up the APIs of its Aadhaar Bridge product, which could be used to integrate the services on the developers’ apps.

Student ID verification app: The winner of the hackathon is the True Scholar app, developed by Bangalore’s Anantha Padmanabha, which uses Aadhaar APIs to verify student identity. It provides a central database for all exam results, online exam registrations and also claims to prevent impersonation during exams.

Document-less verification through Aadhaar: The first runner up is an app called Aadhaarical, developed by Pankaj Chhabra, Supriya Saini, Ishrat Khan and Sachin Arora from Delhi, which enables document-less verification in real time via Aadhaar cards. The app also claims use cases for reporting vehicle theft, tracking missing vehicles, challan issuance, online e-document access to resident and traffic police and car towing notifications when a car is parked in a no parking zone.

Local partnerships for social marketplace: The second runners up position is tied between three teams. The first is an app called Samaadhaar, a social marketplace which claims to connect non-internet users in India to products and service providers through local partnerships. Developed by Dawar Dedmari , Brijesh Masrani, Mahendra Liya and Manan Saleem Beg from Bangalore, the app also provides personalised content and info to users based on an Aadhaar verification.

Driving license through Aadhaar verification: The second team Sumanyu Soniwal, Shubham Gupta, Soubhik Saha from Agra, Lucknow and Ghaziabad, created an app called Aadhaaric License which aims at letting people obtain a driving license through a free online procedure by using their Aadhaar card. The third team of Thiyagarajan, Rajeef, Priyanka and Ashir from Bangalore developed an app called 18-plus which, paired with a fingerprint scanner, lets organisations verify people’s ages.

AngelPrime said that over 5,200 developers from Indians living in and outside the country participated in the hackathon, forming over 1,600 teams who built products surrounding the themes of payments, productivity, government benefits, financial services, FMCG, healthcare and online to offline.

The applications were required to use Aadhaar APIs and were judged on the basis of code quality and ‘sophistication’ of the app by Dr Parmod Varma (Chief Architect of UIDAI), Arvind Gupta (BJP convenor and national head of IT), Ravi Gururaj (Chairman of Nasscom Product Council) and Sanjay Swamy (Managing Partner at AngelPrime). UIDAI volunteers Raj Mashruwala, Sanjay Jain and Dr Vivek Raghavan screened and rated the submissions, shortlisting 11 final teams. The hackathon was administered through the HackerEarth Sprint, a tool developed by HackerEarth for conducting large scale online hackathons.

Image Credit: Flicker user Sebastiaan ter Burg

8188 - Distribution of plastic Aadhaar cards apace - he Hindu

DINDIGUL, June 26, 2015

Distribution of plastic Aadhaar cards apace

STAFF REPORTER

Helpful:Collector T.N. Hariharan, centre, inspecting a common service centre at the taluk office in Nilakottai on Thursday.— PHOTO: G. KARTHIKEYAN

Plea to make use of common service centres

Printing of plastic Aadhaar cards has gained momentum in the district with the commissioning of common service centres of Tamil Nadu Arasu Cable TV Corporation.

A total of 15,000 persons have benefited through these centres in the last four months.

Now, several basic services have been brought under e-service facility.

Inspecting distribution of plastic Aadhaar cards at an e-service centre at Nilakottai near here on Thursday, Collector T.N. Hariharan said that sufficient quantity of plain cards had been supplied to the common service centres to facilitate distribution for all applicants.

Those having Aadhaar number could walk in and print a plastic card at these centres. They must pay Rs.30 for a plastic Aadhaar card if they have already received the card.

Those who had enrolled but yet to receive the card would have to pay Rs.40.

The Collector appealed to the people to make use of service centre and avail all benefits extended by the government and also for obtaining certificates of income, community, nativity, deserted women and first generation graduate.

8187 - Assam govt forces Khasis to enroll under NRC: KSU - Shillong Times

Assam govt forces Khasis to enroll under NRC: KSU

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT | THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2015

Union against implementation of Aadhaar Card scheme in Ri Bhoi

NONGPOH: There seems to be no end to the blatant violation of the status quo agreement signed between the Meghalaya and the Assam government, by the latter, with the latest case being its forced infringement in the disputed Block II area where the Assam government has been compelling the Khasi residents to enroll themselves in the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

The matter came to light during a meeting between a delegation of the KSU North Khasi Hills District Unit and Ri Bhoi Deputy Commissioner Pooja Pandey on Tuesday evening.

The KSU leaders expressed grave concern over the fact that the Assam government had set up an NRC office at Ummat in Block II area in Ri Bhoi District to enroll the local residents.
Speaking to the newsmen here on Wednesday evening, KSU (NKHD) chief F.K. Kharkamni said the Union, during their meeting with the deputy commissioner, demanded a magisterial enquiry into the forced enrolment of Khasi villagers in the Assam NRC.

The KSU unit further expressed displeasure at the implementation of National Population Register (Aadhaar Card scheme) in Ri Bhoi District at a time when the Dorbar Shnong and the Rangbah Shnong were functioning without powers to accord recognition to genuine residents of their respective villages in the district.

The KSU unit chief asserted that the Aadhaar card was not mandatory as per the Supreme Court ruling in 2013.

Kharkamni also informed that the deputy commissioner assured that she would conduct an inquiry into the allegation of forced enrolment under NRC by the Assam government and would also hold consultations with all concerned stakeholders before moving ahead with NRC implementation in Ri Bhoi District.

Read more at http://www.theshillongtimes.com/2015/06/25/assam-govt-forces-khasis-to-enroll-under-nrc-ksu/#7GQwuyGOJQmsXHAW.99

8186 - Here’s how the new income tax returns forms will simplify your tax life - First Post

Here’s how the new income tax returns forms will simplify your tax life

by Sudhir Kaushik  Jun 25, 2015 11:29 IST

The government on Tuesday notified the new income tax returns forms. As per the new norms, an individual or HUF who does not have capital gains, income from business/profession or foreign asset/foreign income can file a shorter version of ITR2, i.e. ITR 2A.

In case you sold any asset during the year then old ITR form 2 needs to be filed. As the software for these forms is under preparation, they are likely to be available for e-filing shortly. ITR1 and ITR4S have been enabled. Therefore, the time limit for filing these returns is extended up to 31 August.

Actually, there would be less than 20 percent of the taxpayers who have capital gain or foreign assets in ITR 2 but one needs to file the bulky form. Hence, for approx 80 percent of these filers, ITR-2A would be more relevant and user friendly. ITR-2A has been introduced which will not ask for capital gains income or foreign assets information.

For the last few years, the income tax department is trying to catch the tax evaders by introducing newer requirement in tax returns and simultaneously projecting itself to be taxpayer-friendly. It goes well with the political agenda of the government too, i.e. controlling black money and imparting effective governance.

But such hypes have a problem – only 5 percent of what is talked about is achieved and the rest 95 percent remain as before. The end result? Neither will the tax to GDP ratio improve, nor will the taxpayers’ perception about the income tax department change.

Here’s how the new ITR forms will change your life:

Passport number to be disclosed whereas travel expense details are not required (ITR2/2A): It seems that the income tax department will get some data from visa authorities based on passport number which will be matched with the return data to catch the tax evaders. To be sure, this is not a fool proof system or very effective one to control the use of black money in domestic travel. Only time will tell whether this hyped change, which actually delayed return filing by one month, is worth it or not.

All bank account numbers to be disclosed: In the current scenario, bank account details of any one of the operating bank account is required to be filled in the ITR Forms. With the passing of the black money Bill, it has become expedient to include details of all bank accounts held during the year. The closing bank balance as of 31 March 2015 is not required in the income tax returns, though.

After a lot of representations from various forums regarding such disclosures, the government now has come up only with the mandatory disclosure of IFS code, account number of all the current/savings account held at any time during the previous year. The balance in accounts will not be required to be furnished. Details of dormant accounts which are not operational during the last three years are not required to be furnished.

Exempt income from fully exempt source can file Sahaj without any ceiling: In the current scenario, individuals/HUFs having any exempt income like long-term capital gains, agricultural income or interest income have to file their returns in ITR-2 or ITR-4 depending on the nature of income. With a view to providing for a simplified form for individuals/HUFs who have earned exempt income without any limit, it is proposed to use ITR-1 Sahaj (Only individuals can use ITR-1) or ITR-4S (Both individuals and HUFs can use ITR-4S), the simplest of all forms. Exempt income without any ceiling refers to those incomes which are fully exempt from tax. Example of income which is fully exempt from tax is long-term capital gains on sale of shares. Example of income which is not fully exempt from tax is agricultural income.

Relief for foreign citizens: Those taxpayers who are not Indian citizens and have come to India on a business, employment or student visa (expatriate), have been exempt from reporting foreign assets acquired by him/her during the previous years in which he was non-resident if no income is derived from such assets during the relevant previous year. This is a relief for these assesses.

Aadhaar card holders need not send ITR-V to Bangalore: The government has come up with an idea of dispensing with the formality of posting the duly signed ITR-V form to CPC, Bengaluru, after e-filing of the income tax returns if the Aadhaar number of the assessee is furnished in the returns. Aadhar number is optional as of now.

The author is Co-Founder & CFO, TaxSpanner.com andhas been a practicing tax consultant for the last 17 years. He is a Fellow Chartered Accountant.

8185 - Four premier hospitals to take online bookings from July 1 - TNN

Four premier hospitals to take online bookings from July 1

Sushmi Dey, TNN | Jun 25, 2015, 07.24AM IST

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's net savvy approach will now be extended to the country's healthcare system with premier hospitals including All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Hospital, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) and Sports Injury Centre (SIC) going online from July 1. 

Under its 'Digital India Initiative', the government has developed an e-Hospital portal which will enable patients to book appointments for out-patient-department (OPD) check-ups and diagnostics, seek details of blood type availability and to get lab reports online. 

Modi is expected to officially launch the portal on July 1, an official told TOI. 

The service, which was being run at AIIMS on pilot basis for the past few months, has also been linked with Aadhaar. Till now, patients were required to visit AIIMS at least once to get a permanent Unique Health Identification number (UHID), which is mandatory for treatment at the institute. However, the latest system would enable patients to sit at home and get a UHID as well as an appointment. 

Though there are only four institutes enrolled on the portal as of now, the government plans to get all the hospitals on board gradually. 

The portal also facilitates patients to make payments online for seeking appointments with doctors and for diagnostics etc. 

The move has been initiated keeping in view the increasing footfall at public healthcare institutes like AIIMS and RML, especially of those travelling from outside Delhi. While online services are expected to reduce the rush in hospitals, it is also expected to bring in more transparency mainly in the public healthcare system where seeking treatment has become increasingly difficult with huge waiting lists. Patients and their kin are often found complaining about influential people jumping queues etc. 

Though, the portal will take time to facilitate hospital admissions online, currently it is focused on bringing in more hospitals on to the platform for OPD appointments, blood availability and other services. 

At AIIMS, the online booking system has reportedly picked up pace after the administration made the option of booking available to patients through their Aadhaar numbers. AIIMS is now also trying to increase the cap for online appointment bookings so that it becomes a preferred choice, the official said.

8184 - e-digital Project: Lockers to Store Digital Documents - New Indian Express

e-digital Project: Lockers to Store Digital Documents

By Express News Service

Published: 25th June 2015 06:01 AM

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Digital lockers that would facilitate storing of documents in e-format are being launched as part of the state-wide e-district project.

With this facility in place, people can upload the copies of their certificates in these lockers and download them when they need it.

A person is required to have his/her Aadhaar number to open the digital account.

Personal certificates and other documents can be safely stored this way and in the place of submitting document copies for job applications and other purposes, providing the Aadhaar number would suffice.

Using the Aadhaar number, an individual or institution can verify the documents in the digital format itself. Submitting the copy of a certificate more than once can also be avoided. Likewise, offices and institutions need not have to collect and store the certificates of applicants.

Camps for digital locker enrolment will be held at all the civil stations and select education institutions till Saturday.

Arrangements are in place to open digital locker accounts in all Akshaya Centres.

An individual who has registered on the website, www.digital-locker.gov.in and have got Aadhaar number can utilise this facility.

8183 - IRCTC plans to make Aadhaar mandatory for user registration - Hindu Businessline

IRCTC plans to make Aadhaar mandatory for user registration

OUR BUREAU

NEW DELHI, JUNE 25:  

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) is planning to make Aadhaar card mandatory for its user registration process for e-ticketing. This will ensure that users registering on the IRCTC web site are properly identified of their identity and address through the Aadhaar card number verification.

However, if implemented, this move may go against the Supreme Court’s ruling that Aadhaar card is not compulsory and officials who insist on them will be taken to task for violation of its interim order in September 2013 that “no person should suffer for not getting the Aadhaar card, in spite of the fact that some authority had issued a circular making it mandatory”.

In a related move, IRCTC has decided to ramp up its e-ticketing operations by hiring the services of Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) for conducting the security audit of its Next Generation E-Ticketing System. As part of this, STQC will conduct the web application security and vulnerability assessment of servers and devices that are part of its e-ticketing operations hosted at irctc.co.in. The STQC Directorate is an attached office of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India.

8182 - 5 things you should know about digital locker - Business Standard

5 things you should know about digital locker

To sign up for your Digital Locker, you need an Aadhaar number and a mobile number linked to that Aadhaar

BS Reporter/Agencies  |  New Delhi  June 24, 2015 Last Updated at 17:25 IST

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 1 will launch the digital locker facility that will help citizens digitally store their important documents, such as PAN card, passport, mark sheets and degree certificates.

Here are five things you need to know about Digital Locker or DigiLocker:

1. Digital Locker will provide secure access to government-issued documents. It uses authenticity services provided by Aadhaar.

2. Digital Locker is aimed at eliminating the use of physical documents and enables sharing of verified electronic documents across government agencies.

3. Digital Locker provides a dedicated personal e-storage space to citizens, linked to their Aadhaar numbers.

4. Digital Locker will reduce the administrative overheads of government departments and agencies created due to paper work. It will also make it easy for Indian citizens to receive services by saving time and effort as their documents will now be available anytime, anywhere and can be shared electronically.

5. To sign up for your Digital Locker, you need your Aadhaar number and a mobile number linked to that Aadhaar number. To sign up, visit https://digitallocker.gov.in/

8181 - This is how Narendra Modi government’s DIGILocker service works - Indian Express

This is how Narendra Modi government’s DIGILocker service works

What is 'Digilocker' — The new initiative that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch on July 1 - And how can you use it to secure documents securely.

The DIGILocker service will be launched on July 1, 2015 - See more at: 

Written by Nandagopal Rajan | New Delhi | Updated: June 25, 2015 1:59 pm

‘DIGILocker’ is the name given to a new digital locker service being initiated by the Narendra Modi government under its Digital India programme.

Online lockers have been around for some years now, and can securely save a variety of digital files in a virtual space. The popular ones like DropBox and Evernote let you send and receive files as well. Extra storage and services are most often paid.

Like other online lockers, DIGILocker too lets users store their documents in a secure online locker. The service, operated by the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY) of the Ministry of Communications & IT, has been running in beta for a couple of months, and will be launched formally by the Prime Minister on July 1.

It will allow users to store all kinds of “government issued” documents, ranging from PAN cards to maybe utility bills and property documents, online.

Indian citizens will be able to avail a maximum of 10MB storage space, using their Aadhaar numbers to sign up. Once the Aadhaar number has been entered, a one-time password (OTP) will be sent to your registered mobile phone to initiate the first log-in. After that, users would be able to set their own passwords, and line the account to Google and Facebook for easy access in future.

The service will let you upload scans or PDFs of a range of documents from utility bills to education certificates and other documents issued by the government. There is also space to save URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers) of other documents. In all probability, once the service is launched, you will see a ‘Save URI to DIGILocker’ option appear after utility payments and receipt of documents. For now, you can start by downloading your Aadhaar and saving it in the locker.

The government is also launching an e-Signature service with DIGILocker. While only certain kind of digital signatures have acceptance at the moment, this move could provide a nationwide push for digital authentication of documents.

India currently does not have a lot of documents that are available online. The exceptions are old Income-Tax Returns, and maybe the Aadhaar number itself. But the DIGILocker initiative is clear indication that the government wants to take most documentation virtual, thus saving money and resources. The move can clearly reduce administrative overheads, time and space.

- See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/technology-others/meaning-digital-locker/#sthash.WoS5lj1L.dpufFirst Published on: June 24, 2015 4:28 am

8180 - Govt notifies revised, but simpler, income-tax return forms - Live Mint

Govt notifies revised, but simpler, income-tax return forms

New forms seek more details from taxpayers, including bank accounts, passport number, foreign assets, Aadhaar

 Remya Nair 

All taxpayers will have to disclose all their bank accounts, except dormant accounts, along with other details such as bank name, but do not have to disclose their bank balances. 

Photo: Mint

New Delhi: The government on Tuesday notified the revised income tax return (ITR) forms that seek more details from taxpayers, including bank accounts, passport number, foreign assets and the unique identity number, or Aadhaar, in a bid to check tax evasion. The forms are, however, simpler than an earlier version, as promised by finance minister Arun Jaitley.

All taxpayers will have to disclose all their bank accounts, except dormant accounts, along with other details such as bank name, but do not have to disclose their bank balances.

Taxpayers—with the exception of those who fill ITR 1—will also have to disclose their passport numbers.

But they will not have to disclose the number of foreign trips they go on or how much they spend on these trips. The main sections of all these forms are under three pages long.

The tax department notified ITR 1, ITR 2, ITR 2A and ITR 4S.

While ITR 1 can be filled by a taxpayer with salary income and income from one house property, ITR 2A—the new simplified version of ITR 2—can be filled by those who have salary income and income from more than one house property but do not have any capital gains accruing to them or any foreign asset.

ITR 2 can be filled by individuals and Hindu undivided families having income from more than one house property and capital gains.

While the new forms will make filing the returns less tedious, the information sought by these forms will be enough to help tax authorities track foreign travel and financial transactions.

The tax return forms, with the exception of ITR 1, also ask for the Aadhaar number of the taxpayer in case the taxpayer has one.

The previous income tax return forms notified in April were criticized by taxpayers for their tedious and intrusive nature, prompting Jaitley to promise to revise them and make them simpler. These forms had sought extensive details about foreign trips as well as information about all bank accounts and bank balances.

Tapati Ghose, partner, Deloitte Haskins and Sells LLP, said the tax return forms are trying to ensure that individuals take cognizance of the domestic and foreign income accruing to them and are not omitting anything. “As compared with last year, the income tax return forms seek many more details with regard to the foreign assets held, like the type of ownership and the income accruing from these assets. For domestic income also, the details sought regarding capital gains are much higher,” she said.

The government has been trying to curb black money both within and outside India and has introduced legislation to this effect. Archit Gupta, founder and chief executive officer, ClearTax, said the new ITR 2A form will make it much more simple to file tax returns.

“Taxpayers who don’t have capital gains but own more than one house property will be filing a much shorter new form 2A. Even those who have long-term capital gains accruing to them from the sale of shares on a stock exchange can fill form 2A,” Gupta said.

8179 - Simplified income tax returns norms notified; deadline 31 Aug; Aadhaar number mandatory - First Post

Simplified income tax returns norms notified; deadline 31 Aug; Aadhaar number mandatory

Jun 24, 2015 07:10 IST

New Delhi: The Income Tax department has notified the new set of ITR forms, including a three-page simplified one, for taxpayers to file their returns for assessment year 2015-16.

Simplified tax regime. AFP

With the finance ministry publishing the gazette order yesterday, taxpayers and other entities can now file their Income Tax Returns (ITR) till 31 August, the new deadline set in this regard by the government after it dropped the earlier forms which had attracted criticism for seeking numerous additional details like that of filers' foreign travel and about dormant bank accounts.

The most simplified form, ITR-2A, to be filled by those individuals and HUFs who do not have income from either business, profession or by way of capital gains and do not hold foreign assets, only asks for the passport number of the tax-filer, with the words "if available".

Filers now will have to declare only about the "total number of savings and current bank accounts" held by them "at any time during the previous year (excluding dormant accounts)."

The form also has space to fill up the IFSC code of the bank and in an additional feature, tax filers have been given an option to indicate their bank accounts in which they would want their refund credited.

The I-T department, in the new ITRs, has also sought the Aadhaar number of filers and has also given options for providing two email ids to it.

"The inclusion of Aadhaar and emails are to ensure a regime of online ITR filing in the country," a senior official said.

The department has also provided for an additional four-page schedule to this simplified form for those who wish to file anymore details, applicable in a case-to-case basis.

In the ITR-2, for individuals and HUFs having income from business or profession, the form remains simple but they will have to declare if they hold any foreign assets abroad or have income from "any source outside India."

The new ITRs have replaced the 14-page form that were notified earlier this year, triggering a major controversy with individuals, industrialists and MPs saying tax filing would become cumbersome as those forms had sought details including foreign trips and bank accounts details.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had ordered putting these forms on hold following the controversy.

The last date for filing of the ITR has already been extended for this year to 31 August.

Also, in the new ITRs, an expat who is not an Indian citizen and is in India on business, employment or student visa, would not mandatorily be required to report the foreign assets acquired by him during the previous years when he was non-resident and if no income was derived from such assets during the relevant previous year.

PTI

8178 - New technologies pose challenge to Infosys: R Seshasayee

New technologies pose challenge to Infosys: R Seshasayee

Seshesayee, 67, who took over the top post on June 5 from K.V. Kamath, has been an independent director of the global software major since January 2011 and its audit committee chairman.

IANS  |  22 June 2015, 6:01 PM IST

BENGALURU: Traditional business models were being disrupted by new technologies and new ideas, which pose challenges and opportunities, Infosys' non-executive chairman R. Seshasayee said on Monday.

"We are in the midst of tremendous changes in the IT industry and our company. (Chief Executive) Vishal Sikka and his management team have articulated a clear strategy to exploit these emerging opportunities," he told investors at the company's 34th annual general meeting here.

Seshesayee, 67, who took over the top post on June 5 from K.V. Kamath, has been an independent director of the global software major since January 2011 and its audit committee chairman.

"The board fully supports the strategic direction taken by the new management and we are confident of desired outcomes in the coming years," Seshasayee said in his first address to about 1,000 investors at a college auditorium in the city.

Noting that 2014-15 was a landmark year for the outsourcing firm during which three of the seven co-founders bid farewell and Sikka became the first non-founder executive, he said their vision, selfless efforts and fundamental values to build an institution had become the country's pride.

"The board of this company was chaired by two iconic leaders - co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and Kamath, who had set very high benchmarks in corporate governance and shareholder value creation," he said.

Kamath stepped down from the top post following his nomination as president of the $50-billion BRICS' development bank at Shanghai,

"Kamath has been a great source of guidance to all of on the board, bringing clarity of purpose and speed in execution, which helped in steering the troubled company through a time of change," Seshesayee noted.

Besides, Murthy, who was chairman, vice-chairman S.Gopalakrishnan and chief executive S.D. Shibulal were the three co-founders who relinquished their executive posts in October and July last fiscal. The other four are Nandan Nilekani, N.S. Raghavan, K. Dinesh and Ashok Arora.

Though Raghavan retired in 2000 as joint managing director, and Arora, who was on the board till 1989, left for the US later, four co-founders steered the company from a $100 million to $8.7-billion IT behemoth as successive chief executives, with Shibulal being the last.

Nilekani, who was chief executive from 2002-07, quit the company as co-chairman in 2009 on becoming chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which issues Aadhaar card to citizens.

Dinesh retired in 2011 as the company's head of quality, information systems and the communication design group.

Acknowledging the efforts of the 1.76-lakh employees in shaping and growing the $8.7-billion company, the chairman said their dedication, hard work and sense of values had differentiated the company from others.