Law Shastra

ITAT laments severe fall in standards of CA profession. Advices ICAI to take disciplinary proceedings against erring members & tackle issue on war footing The assessee filed appeals for AY 1994-95 & 1996-97 which were delayed by 2984 days. In support of the application for condonation of delay, the assessee claimed that his CA, M/s Rajesh Rajeev Associates, had advised him that as he had already filed an appeal for AY 1993-94 on the same point, which was pending before the Tribunal, he need not file appeals for AYs 1994-95 & 1996-97 and, instead, he could, after adjudication of the appeal for AY 1993-94 by the Tribunal, move a rectification application before the AO to bring the assessment order in conformity with the decision of the Tribunal. The CA filed an affidavit in which he confirmed having given the said advice. In the condonation application, the assessee pleaded that he ought not to be made to suffer for the “incorrect” advice given by the CA. HELD by the Tribun...

The Financial Express  Posted online: Tuesday, Sep 02, 2014 at 0000 hrs Till some time back, the Employees Pension Scheme (EPS) portion of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) had a hole of around R50,000 crore in terms of the unfunded liability for future pensions, though a later study suggested this may be a lower R 10,000 crore. Many suggestions were made to fix this, and this included increasing the age at which the pension would accrue as well as increasing the number of people who would contribute to the EPFO and its EPS. What the government has done fixes the problem somewhat by ensuring that the pension will not be available to those new members who earn more than R15,000 per month— existing members who earn more than this will have to pay the government’s contribution of 1.13% of their basic to avail of this facility —and various other benefits have also been trimmed. But there is a larger problem that needs to be fixed. For one, if the scheme is fundamenta...