Stricter prepaid SIM card rules

The Supreme Court today set up an expert panel to examine the feasibility of imposing stricter norms for selling prepaid SIM (subscriber identity module) cards. Two members each from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) and the department of telecom (DoT) will be the members of the committee, which will submit its report in three months, said a bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia. The DoT will then consider the recommendations. In 2010, the department of telecom, in consultation with the home ministry, had issued mobile connection guidelines, which called for strict adherence to the customer acquisition form while issuing SIM cards. However, mobile firms have been unable to adhere to the strict rules, which emphasized on updating the subscriber details in their database and activation of the SIM only by authorized persons. The rules also required companies to revivify subscribers when they changed their tariff plans. Also no customer shall be given more than one prepaid or post-paid connection. If an individual wants more than one connection, the person has to give reasons. Last month, the telecom regulator had argued in favour of easing of the guidelines, pleading before the Supreme Court that the new norms will put “unnecessary burden” on operators as well as subscribers.

Schroder buys 25% of Axis mutual arm

Axis Bank today sealed an agreement to sell a 25 per cent stake in Axis Asset Management Company Ltd (Axis AMC) — its wholly owned subsidiary — to Schroder Singapore Holdings Private Ltd.

Schroder Singapore is a wholly owned subsidiary of global asset management firm Schroders, which had funds worth £187.3 billion under management as of December 2011.

The deal is subject to regulatory approval and is likely to be completed this year.

The deal provides Axis AMC access to Schroders’ global distribution network.

Profit surges

Axis Bank has clocked a 20.3 per cent rise in net profit at Rs 1,277.27 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31 against Rs 1,020.11 crore in the same quarter last fiscal.

Total income grew to Rs 7,647.94 crore from Rs 5,817.06 crore a year ago.

Interest income improved to Rs 6,060.32 crore from Rs 4,366.6 crore last year.

The bank has proposed a dividend of 160 per cent, or Rs 16 per share, for 2011-12.

For the entire fiscal ended March, net profit grew 25 per cent to Rs 4,242.21 crore from Rs 3,388.4 crore last year.

Tax relief hope for PE funds

The finance ministry seems to have accepted the arguments of private equity funds that they are subject to the same rate of capital gains tax as foreign institutional investors.

Investments of private equity funds in unlisted firms are currently taxed at 20 per cent, while foreign institutional investors pay half of that rate.

It is anticipated that fresh amendments to the finance bill were likely once Parliament takes it up.

India’s proposed general anti-avoidance rules (GAAR), which stop funds from abusing the zero tax status of countries such as Mauritius, while playing on Indian bourses have unnerved the private funds.

GAAR, brought in this year’s finance bill, allows tax authorities to declare any business deal to be an “impermissible avoidance arrangement” if part or whole of the deal has been crafted with the intention of obtaining “tax benefits”.

The move to tax PEs on a par with FIIs was in the works for some time.PE firms, including big names such as Carlyle, Khazanah, Temasek and Warburg Pincus, reportedly sold off shares worth over $1.8 billion in the first three months of 2012, much of it after India announced that it would implement GAAR in the future.

The government would continue to reiterate through policy pronouncements that FIIs who had “substantial commercial interests” in any tax haven would continue to benefit from low or zero tax regimes of these countries as provided by the direct tax avoidance agreements signed with them.

“DTAAs will continue to be valid and are not being sought to be over-ridden,” as per the blog source.

The government will also make it clear that there will be no short- or long-term capital gains taxes for participatory note holders. There were apprehensions that participatory notes would be taxed under the new GAAR rules.

As per the finance ministry, the trading of participatory notes just led to the change of hands of a contract note or a derivative — underlying assets or shares in India do not change hands.

They wanted to set at rest “worries” of participatory holders who have as much as $20 billion of Indian stock assets in their portfolios.

Many investors, who want to test Indian stock markets or who wish to play without the bother of registering themselves with Sebi use these participatory notes, which are certificates with underlying Indian shares.

It’s estimated that FIIs have invested about 10 per cent of their approximately Rs 10,00,000-crore portfolio in India through participatory notes.

IFSC CODE

What does IFSC mean? 

Indian Financial System Code (IFSC) is an alpha-numeric code that uniquely identifies a bank-branch; it’s an 11 digit code.

• The first 4 alphabetic characters represent the bank.
• The 5th character is 0 (zero).
• The last 6 characters represent the branch.

IFSC is used by the NEFT system to identify the originating bank branch and also to route the messages appropriately to the concerned bank branches.

List of IFSC codes, branch wise is available with RBI:

http://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/bs_viewcontent.aspx?Id=2009

RTGS VS NEFT

There has been a lot questions about the differences between a RTGS and a NEFT money transfer, get all your doubts clarified here.

Employee Provident Fund

Your ever elusive Employee Provident fund balance can now be checked online, here's how...

A lot of us do not have even an idea on how much money we have in our Employee Providend fund account (EPF) . So in this post we will see how one can check his EPF balance online and get the details back through sms . Earlier I used to search a lot on checking EPF balance online and I came across some links , but most of them never worked. But few months back I successfully got sms with my EPF balance. Let me show you that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc2FyJo6g9I&feature=player_embedded

How to check your EPF balance status online

• Go to this EPFO website link
• There will be a link below the page to check your status online , click on that (direct link)
• You will see a drop down there to select the PF Office State ( like Maharashtra, Karnataka , Delhi etc) . Select your PF office .
• Once you select the State , you will see a list of different cities office, like for Karnataka , you can see one of the options as “Bangalore” along with the “data available upto” date , so you can get your EPF balance till that date only .
• Choose the city office
• You will be taken to the page where you will have to fill in EPF account number , Your Name and mobile number and Submit.

How to enter your EPF account detail ?

For an example lets say Manish Chauhan worked in Bangalore and had a  EPF account with number KN/62345/876 . This name “Manish Chauhan” is the name appearing in EPF slip .

In that case 62345 will be the Establishment Code (which will be first blank column) and 876 will be the account number (third column) . The second column will be blank in most of the cases , it’s actually the sub code or extension of the establishment code.

Important Points

• Note that the name should be exactly same as it appears in EPF slip
• The office and state have to be selected properly , In a single start there can be many offices , make sure you choose the right one.
• The SMS can come a little late , so please be patient
• The amount can be only upto a certain date which will be mentioned in the SMS

Can you share if you have are waiting for your EPF money from long time ? Are you facing problem in getting right information on why your EPF money has not reached you ?

PAN explained

PAN is a 10 digit alpha numeric number, where the first 5 characters are letters, the next 4 numbers and the last one a letter again. 

These 10 characters can be divided in five parts as can be seen below. 

The meaning of each number has been explained further.

1.        First three characters are alphabetic series running from AAA to ZZZ

2.        Fourth character of PAN represents the status of the PAN holder.
•          C — Company
•          P — Person
•          H — HUF (Hindu Undivided Family)
•          F — Firm
•          A — Association of Persons (AOP)
•          T — AOP (Trust)
•          B — Body of Individuals (BOI)
•          L — Local Authority
•          J — Artificial Juridical Person
•          G — Government

3.       Fifth character represents first character of the PAN holder’s last name/surname.

4.        Next four characters are sequential number running from 0001 to 9999.

5.        Last character in the PAN is an alphabetic check digit.

Nowadays, the DOI (Date of Issue) of PAN card is mentioned at the right (vertical) hand side of the photo on the PAN card.