RCA

Companies had to use state governments' stamp duty documents for certain purposes such as incorporation of a new company, increase in authorised capital etc. These documents also had to be scanned and uploaded and also physically filed with the Registrar of Companies having jurisdiction.

Vide a notification issued on September 9, 2009, the Ministry of Company Affairs [MCA] has revised the procedure and has made it compulsory to make the payment of the duty, on the MCA portal electronically. Once the payment is so made, the companies are not required to make physical submission of such documents on which stamp duty is paid electronically via MCA portal (www.mca.gov.in). The stamp duty so collected by the MCA will be paid to the respective state governments immediately. This arrangement is effective from 13th September 2009.

Submitted by By Nitesh Bhandari, Articled Assistant

I would like to give my opinion on some of the provision contained in the new direct tax code. They are as follows:

With reference to the provisions related to the Minimum alternative Tax contained in the draft of the New Direct Tax Code, the MAT tax base is expected to increase manifold. The code if cleared without modification would impose MAT at a rate of 2% (0.25% for any banking companies) of gross block of assets including the capital work in progress and book value any other assets after netting off the amount of accumulated depreciation and debit balance of Profit & Loss account if included in the gross block of the assets. This implies that bigger the size of the balance sheet, the higher the amount of Minimum Alternate tax to be paid.