In what can be said, an effort to dilute the rules and ease the concern of controversial general anti-avoidance rules (GAAR), the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has appointed a four-member committee headed by noted economist and tax expert Parthasarathi Shome to rework on GAAR, a measure to check tax evasion, proposed in the Union Budget 2012-13, which was later deferred till April next year in the wake of outrage by foreign investors.
The government has tried to rope in the best taxation brains as Foreign institutional investors (FII) raised their voice on prospect of being unfairly taxed. A new panel led by Parthasarathi Shome, former adviser to the finance minister during P Chidambaram’s tenure between 2004 and 2008, will prepare a road map on GAAR by September 30. N Rangachary, former IRDA chairman, Ajay Shah and Sunil Gupta, joint secretary, tax policy and legislation, department of revenue and a member from the earlier panel, will also be a part of the panel. The setting up of the committee comes within a fortnight of the Finance Ministry issuing draft guidelines on GAAR.
The Shome committee after reading and vetting the responses to the draft guidelines that the finance ministry has put out on June 28, will draft second GAAR guidelines by August 31, which would be submitted along with its road map for implementation by the end of the September.
Although the government has clarified that it will not tax Participatory Notes (P-Notes) directly, but the fears has made them worried about that route of investment, the Shome committee will now discuss these issues too.
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