Aarohi Blog

The government might soon make Aadhaar mandatory for buying shares and mutual funds to prevent the conversion of black money into white through the stock market, the Economic Times reported on Thursday. According to the financial daily, the government and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) are planning to link financial market transactions to Aadhaar after, according to two sources cited by the report, the former came to realise that the permanent account number (PAN) might not be sufficient in putting an end to tax evasion."We have been told that making Aadhaar compulsory is in the offing," a top official with a financial services firm told the financial daily. However, according to a CEO of a brokerage firm, who spoke to the financial daily on the condition of anonymity, the move could unsettle some "regional players" who could see a "dip in activity even in IPO market".However,the source said this dip would be temporary. Acc...

The government announced Bharat 22 , an exchange traded fund of 22 large cap shares. While the composition includes mostly profit-making, dividend paying public sector companies, the government is also including some shares of blue chip companies like ITC, Larsen & Toubro and Axis Bank held under the Special Undertaking of Unit Trust of India or SUUTI. The government observed in the release that over the past 3 years to June 2017, assets under management of exchange traded funds in India surged five times to just under Rs 54,000 crore. The release also emphasized that exchange traded funds or ETFs are a popular class of funds globally. Assets under management are expected to grow to $7 trillion by 2021 from $4 trillion today. There is merit in the argument the government has made in the press release. ETFs have become a preferred vehicle for parking the long-term money. Sovereign Wealth Funds and Pension Funds worldwide love them. While the average cost of fund manag...

In the quiet village of Rorbas, just outside Zurich, Rudolf M. Elmer has been fighting a 12-year-long legal battle against the centuries-old traditions of Swiss banking secrecy. Elmer, who ran the Caribbean operations of the Swiss bank, Julius Baer, for eight years before being dismissed in 2002, was part of the first wave of Swiss bank whistleblowers who helped expose the inner workings of a system that helped the world’s rich In 2011, he was tried for sharing information about tax evasion, money laundering and other financial violations with US tax authorities and WikiLeaks. Over the past six years, Elmer has been imprisoned for 200 days, some of it in solitary confinement, and has fended off an orchestrated harassment campaign against his family. however, may finally be looking up. In 2016, the high court of Zurich turned down demands by the prosecution to convict the 60 year old of breaching Swiss banking secrecy laws. If the Federal Supreme Court rules in his favour...

The Income Tax department is probing over 30,000 cases of alleged tax evasion wherein the returns (ITRs) were revised by assessees post demonetisation, CBDT chief Sushil Chandra said on Monday.The Income Tax returns filed after November 8 last year were scrutinised against their earlier tax compliance following which these cases were detected, he said. "We are taking action in these instances," Chandra told reporters on the sidelines of an event to mark the 157th Income Tax day here. He said that after the first phase of 'Operation Clean Money', it was found that some assesses did not report about all their bank accounts to the taxman. Under the Operation Clean Money, the I-T department is contacting those whose bank account deposits were seen to be suspicious post the note ban. "We have found that they (assessees) have got more accounts...They have given less accounts in their replies (to the department). We have now informed them through email and ...