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Indian Hotels CEO highlights high taxes hurting tourism sector growth
He also sought an "additional push" while referring to the "infrastructure" status accorded to 50 tourist destinations in this year's Budget and reiterated the long-standing demand for an "industry" status.
Alluding to the lack of competitive advantage in terms of margins, the Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL) MD and CEO said, "If you are the highest taxed sector in every possible way, GST, excise, paying all charges during COVID when your business is shut with the least amount of budget for promotion, for marketing the destination and just relying on what we have, then how are you going to create those kind of global brands on your own".
Speaking at CII's Annual Business Summit, Chhatwal said India is not just a market of scale but a market of aspiration. It is where the next 500 million middle-income travellers will emerge and their disposable income, coupled with global travel ambitions, will position India very differently within the country and across the globe.
In an apparent reference to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's budget speech, he said, "We at least got infra status for those 50 destinations which we have been fighting for, including industry status, which is a state subject. Collectively, all the associations have worked well to get to where we are, but now where we are, we need that additional push".
In her Budget speech on February 1, Sitharaman stated that the top 50 tourist destination sites in the country will be developed in partnership with states through a challenge mode. Land for building key infrastructure will have to be provided by states.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Time of India
19 minutes ago
- Time of India
Samsung's FY26 Q1 exports fall 20% as PLI benefits end; Apple, Dixon may be next
Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Disability with Vietnam, China Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads New Delhi: Samsung's exports of smartphones slumped by almost a fifth year-on-year in the first quarter of FY26, likely because the South Korean major is no longer eligible for benefits under the smartphone production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme since to industry executives, without the PLI incentives, Samsung may have lost export competitiveness and thus recalibrated its export plans. And the same could happen to Apple and Dixon Technologies - two other major beneficiaries of the scheme - after March 2026."The combined effect of all three - who have been the flagbearers of the PLI scheme and local manufacturing and exports - has the potential to derail India's bid to become a smartphone manufacturing hub for global markets," an industry executive said, asking not to be identified. Samsung exported smartphones worth about $950 million in the June quarter, according to industry is down from $1.17 billion a year earlier and $1.2 billion in the smartphone PLI, India suffers a manufacturing cost differential, or disability, of 10% compared with Vietnam, and 15% with China, experts with PLI benefits of 4-6%, there was some disability, but still, brands and manufacturers were diversifying production and increasing exports from India considering the geopolitical situation, they said. Not being able to compete against the likes of China and Vietnam would be disastrous at a time all three countries are trying to get a favourable trade deal with the US, and more companies are examining a China+1 strategy amid continuing geopolitical tensions, experts industry has been sounding out the government for an extension of the smartphone PLI scheme beyond FY26 to sustain the momentum of growing exports, which zoomed to $24.1 billion in FY25, from just $200 million in the government does accept the competitive disadvantage without the scheme incentives, it is yet to take a call on an extension. 'The scheme tenure was fixed, and we have to see the legalities if it can be extended or not. But we do intend to support the industry,' an official told ET on condition of recently launched a ₹22,919-crore components incentive scheme to build on the success of the smartphone PLI scheme and increase local value this latest initiative could suffer if manufacturers back off on further investments in local production owing to disabilities compared to competing geographies, experts the PLI years, Samsung increased smartphone exports from India to $4.4 billion in FY25, from $1.2 billion in company is seeking incentives under the scheme in the current fiscal in lieu of the second year, when it did not get them as it failed to meet the targets. People familiar with the matter said Samsung faced Covid-related issues in the second year of the scheme, that is, electronics major's argument is that if other PLI applicants could get an extension owing to Covid restrictions, it, too, should be given a year more, industry executives said.A query sent to Samsung regarding drop in exports in the first quarter of FY26 remained unanswered at the time of going to was the only company to meet PLI targets and avail incentives for the first year of the scheme – FY21. It had selected FY21-FY25 for its five-year PLI as it was already present in the country and could utilise the existing brownfield operations. Apple and others had to build factories and, due to Covid restrictions, they failed to complete the operations on time and sought a year's extension under the force majeure clause. The government agreed and extended the scheme tenure to six years – till FY26 – with a condition that companies can seek incentives for any five consecutive years of their choice within the time has been the flagbearer of smartphone exports, followed by Samsung and Dixon, which manufacturers devices for Google, Motorola and Xiaomi, among others.
Indian Express
2 hours ago
- Indian Express
As the economy grows, so would tax collection; hopeful of meeting FY26 target: CBDT Chairman Ravi Agrawal
The net direct tax collections may have slowed down, but the Income Tax Department is 'comfortable and hopeful' of meeting the target for the ongoing financial year 2025-26, Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Chairman Ravi Agrawal said. In an interview with Aanchal Magazine, the CBDT Chairman listed several measures including the various 'nudge' campaigns being taken by the Department to boost compliance that has already resulted in filing of over 1.1 crore updated returns and collections of over Rs 11,000 crore. However, there is scope for further increase in the number of returns filed by taxpayers. Edited excerpts: There is a moderation in direct tax collections. Till July 10, it was 1.3 per cent down year-on-year. Is it because of the income tax benefits given in the Budget? How are you assessing the trend vis-a-vis the target? When this overall net tax collection (budget estimate) was given to us, at that point, this element (income tax cut) was also factored in while arriving at the figure and while estimating the tax buoyancy, this was factored in. We are hopeful that it will be done. So far as the reduction is concerned, that was primarily attributable to higher refunds outgo. Also, the fact that if you compare July last year versus July this year, the difference is that the due date for filing the return was July 31, and self-assessment tax was also coming. Since the due date has been shifted, that collection to that extent has basically taken a hit to that extent. But then, going forward, we feel that as the economy grows, so would the tax collection because ultimately taxes are derivative of economic growth. So, economic growth, and then better tax administration, would definitely yield. We are comfortable and hopeful of meeting the target. How is the Income Tax Department making use of digital technologies to boost compliance? On an annual basis, the department captures around 650 crore transactions data from different sources. These transactions are collated, and for about 40 crore PANs, Annual Information Statements (AIS) are generated. This has the data of your TDS, tax payment, any transactions that have been done with different parties, maybe immobile property, or shares or mutual funds or any other. That is reflected on the portal online that is available to the taxpayers. And it's not only available to the taxpayers, they are seeing it, which is an interesting statistic, to me it was very interesting. If you see in FY 2024-25, about 7.42 crore taxpayers actually saw their AIS. And the number of times they actually visited, on an average, if we see, it's about three and a half times. That means the visits to the AIS module of ours was 24 crore times. The point I'm trying to make is that one, you collate this information, this information is corresponding to more than 40 crore taxpayers and more than 7.5 crore taxpayers actually see this multiple times. This becomes a reference point basically for the taxpayer to see their ledger, take a call, what are the taxes to be paid like advance tax and all, whether it has to be paid or not and the return that has to be filed, what is the income that has to be reflected, which means that there is a wide acceptability of the information and the ledger in the form of AIS that is being shown to the taxpayer. It also reflects their confidence in the information that is being shown. 9 crore people are filing the returns and you have more than about 40 crore people in whose case this AIS has been updated. So therefore we can say that yes, there is a scope for further increase in the number of returns that have been filed. What is the role of AI in such analysis? In that context, now we come to what is the role of AI? So, one is, who ought to file the return is not filing. You have this data. Based on that, you can come up with potential cases and then correspond with them electronically. So whatever coordinates you have, you can inform. The second component is whosoever is filing the return, whether a correct return has been filed or not. In case, there is an obvious gap or something which needs to be flagged and from the taxpayer nudge him towards better compliance, and right compliance. And the third component is: if you find that the taxpayer is repeatedly committing a mistake, can there be a case of a harder nudge? So these are components of tax administration that we are working on and where AI is helping. Because AI is then raising red flags in all these transactions and saying: okay, this maybe you would like to consider. And based on that we do a ABC sort of analysis, the numbers are huge…every year some 9 crore people would file returns and then you have to do that analysis. This is the extent and volume of e-governance in the tax department. The direct tax department is huge and if you see the profile of the taxpayer, that spectrum is also really very very wide wherein on one hand, you have a technologically-challenged taxpayer to a very, very matured taxpayer who is very, very technology savvy. So you have to build a system to make sure that the wide spectrum of people are able to see and find value with it. We have seen on the indirect tax side also, like for GST, a move towards capturing the unregistered persons. Is there a similar move from the direct tax side to expand the tax net to the ones who are not filing returns? Basically, what has to be seen is that the taxpayers' base is also increasing. And also the number of people who are filing the returns are also increasing. More and more awareness once it comes, naturally the compliance will go up. So I would not put this number that all these 40 crore people were supposed to file the return and they ought to be our taxpayer. No, not that. But, yes, there is a scope for improvement. And then how do we nudge the taxpayer? How do we prompt the taxpayer to come look at their transactions and then if there is a requirement of filing a return, the person would. I think the awareness is there all across, the communication is also fast, so, by and large, now the taxpayer is also aware about the obligations. It's not that the taxpayer is not aware about it. They are taking that call. And once more and more the data gets matured and it gets populated and you are able to reflect it online, people will take care. Especially, younger generation. How is the Tax Department flagging these gaps to the taxpayers? Our systems create a 360-degree profile of taxpayers' financial transactions and flag any inconsistencies between their declared income and their financial activities. The in-house 'Project INSIGHT', uses advanced data analytics to collate information from various sources, including bank reports, financial institutions, sub-registrars of properties etc. The Department proactively nudges taxpayers suspected of making wrong claims or omissions to update their returns and pay the correct tax. The success of this approach is visible in the outcome of the 'nudge' campaigns. In the Foreign Income and Assets Nudge Campaign, based on matching data received under automatic exchange of information, 19,501 taxpayers were nudged. This resulted in 62 per cent of them revising their returns, and a total of 30,161 taxpayers declared foreign assets worth Rs 29,208 crores and foreign income of Rs 1,089 crore during the campaign period. For false claims, data analytics identified over Rs 9,000 crore in excess deductions claimed under Section 80GGC. Nudging taxpayers through SMS and emails led to a reduction of Rs 963 crore in deductions and the payment of Rs 409.50 crore in additional taxes as of June 18, 2025. The Virtual Digital Assets Nudge Campaign is also ongoing, wherein the taxpayers are being nudged through SMS and e-mail to revisit claims made in ITRs related to TDS under Section 194S versus Schedule VDA filings. The updated return facility (ITR-U) has seen significant success. As of June 18, 2025, a total of 8,892,395 updated ITRs have been filed, generating Rs 9577.06 crore in additional taxes. Overall, over 1.1 crore updated returns have been filed, collecting more than Rs 11,000 crore. By proactively providing taxpayers with information about their financial transactions, we encourage voluntary compliance. How is the Department communicating with the taxpayers? We are communicating with non-filers…there is an ABC analysis that we do to find which people have entered into larger transactions, and who are not filing. Maybe a person had filed earlier in the earlier year, but has chosen not to file this year. So then you can identify those people and try to also see rational from our end through AI. What could be the reason that this guy has not filed now. For example, the person may have entered into an immovable property transaction in one year, and subsequently, it may not be so. It may be something like that the income does not fall above the threshold. You see all those cases, see the high-end cases and then correspond with them through emails in the database or from other data sources. Recently, there were search operations at 150 locations. Was it a similar exercise? This was basically an exercise in that direction. The taxpayer reports certain income, and while calculating their income, reports certain exemptions or deductions which are taken on face value and the system processes. But what we found through AI was that there were gaps, and they were really patterns that emerged, which reflected that the deductions and the exemptions that were claimed were not the correct deductions/exemptions. So, therefore, our pan-India exercise was undertaken to also flag and bring home the point that while we trust the taxpayer, but then at the same time, incorrect claims of deductions and exemptions are not acceptable, and we have not actually gone to the taxpayer per se. We have gone to the intermediary or the facilitator who is misguiding the taxpayer and identify those people. Those could be professionals or intermediaries. Through those, more than 1.5 lakh PANs have been identified. The exercise is still going on. At times, what happens is that the intermediaries give false promises of refunds, and potentially the taxpayer may not be aware of what is being filed. So one has to be cautious about it because it has implications. Since it is an end-to-end, e-enabled service that the tax department is providing, unless the taxpayer gives us the right coordinates of email and mobile, it becomes really very difficult for the tax department to correspond with the taxpayer. If an email of an intermediary is given, or a temporary email of an intermediary is given, then naturally the correspondence would go or the letter would go to that very email which is not being seen by anyone, and therefore, the taxpayer ultimately takes a hit. Like, we are committed to providing refunds as soon as possible. The average time for refunds is 17 days now (38 days in 2020-21) after returns are filed. But how do we give it unless, until the taxpayer actually gives the right coordinates. How is the Tax Department selecting cases for scrutiny? The Computer Assisted Scrutiny Selection (CASS) is a technology-driven system used by the Income Tax Department to select income tax returns for scrutiny, aiming to ensure efficiency, transparency, and objectivity. The CASS risk rules and selection parameters are regularly reviewed and updated to adapt to evolving tax evasion patterns, compliance behaviors, and policy changes. This includes incorporating new data sources like enhanced TDS and SFT reporting for more precise risk assessments. Approximately 0.3 per cent of all income tax returns filed annually are selected for scrutiny, including cases chosen under CASS and other mechanisms like reopening. The proportion specifically selected under CASS typically ranges from 0.05-0.2 per cent of total annual returns filed. For FY 2024-25, about 2.5 lakh cases were selected for scrutiny, representing only about 0.29 per cent of total ITR filers. The Department operates on a 'Trust First and Scrutinise Later' philosophy, focusing on high-risk cases rather than random selection. You mentioned email addresses being incorrect or temporary. Apart from electronic communication, is there any other method of communication which the tax department is exploring since PAN is Aadhaar linked and you can go back to check addresses? No, we would prefer only an e-route. One, that is trackable also. There's an audit to it also. And, ultimately overall you see that it makes our service fast. Look at the volumes. What we would encourage is correspondence through e-mails. The Select Committee has submitted its report on the new Income Tax Bill. There were a lot of concerns raised by digital rights activists about privacy about the storage of data which the tax department would be accessing during an investigation. Say, there is personal or privileged communication between family members or doctors/lawyers. How will the income tax department ensure that that trust is not breached or misused during a probe? First, from a regulatory point of view, statutory permissions are there which mandate the tax department to actually not part with the data in an unauthorised manner. It's a legal obligation. Having said that, practically, in practice, how are we going to go about it? We have put in place a mechanism where this information or this data is scrutinised in a sanitised environment by authorised people. And also, the data which gets raised but which pertains to the privacy domain, is redacted and only the relevant data is investigated. We are also now coming up, we are in the process of defining procedures wherein these things could be made more tight to take care of a taxpayer. It is a genuine concern of the taxpayer. But, then you see, how do you investigate? There's a mobile, there is a personal chat also here, there's a financial transaction also. So, say, it's WhatsApp, it's both. You got to maintain the evidentiary value of this mobile also. It cannot be that at that point in time, you say I'll take this but I'll not take the other part. There would be continuity. So, therefore, to maintain the evidentiary value, you have got to capture the data in toto. But then once you have captured the data, it's the responsibility of the tax department to ensure that whatever investigation is done, only the relevant data is actually analysed, and the other data is redacted. So will there be specific rules for the new investigation process based on the new bill? If you see the manual that we have come out with, the search and seizure manual, we have put that also as one of the requirements. We are also coming up with the digital manual for analysis of digital evidence. There also we would be actually taking care of it. So, we will address it. What is the pendency of cases in direct taxes? And how are you going to address it? Yes, there is a pendency. About 5.5 lakh cases are pending. So we have taken certain steps. For example, last year we came up with this VSVS 2024 scheme (Vivad se Vishwas Scheme), and 40,000 people participated in that. To that extent, those were taken care of. Now, what we have done is that we have expanded the numbers of commissioner appeals. Officers who were doing appellate ones. We have also given appeal work to principal commissioners. We have tried to profile appeals with similar issues, Identify which can be low-hanging fruits for easy disposals. We have tried to give numbers, scores to the appeals, which actually prompt the officers to dispose of more appeals. So these are the steps that have been taken. In fact, if you see last year, we disposed of about 1.75 lakh appeals at the first appellate level in FY25, which was a substantial percentage increase of 55.18 per cent over 2023-24. And more so, the number of disposals were more than the number of new appeals instituted. So that in fact, for the first time, this came down but we are very conscious about it. The Select Committee was also insistent, and rightly so, that we should actually work on reducing the appellate pendency. Primarily this happened because at the time of Covid, the appeal disposal was not so high. So all those things were there. But we are taking all the steps. So this year, you are looking at reducing… Yes. In a big way, we are trying to reduce. We have already set for ourselves a target of more than 2 lakh for this year, but then we will not rest at that and we'll try to (reduce it) further. Aanchal Magazine is Senior Assistant Editor with The Indian Express and reports on the macro economy and fiscal policy, with a special focus on economic science, labour trends, taxation and revenue metrics. With over 13 years of newsroom experience, she has also reported in detail on macroeconomic data such as trends and policy actions related to inflation, GDP growth and fiscal arithmetic. Interested in the history of her homeland, Kashmir, she likes to read about its culture and tradition in her spare time, along with trying to map the journeys of displacement from there. ... Read More
Time of India
6 hours ago
- Time of India
Lodha Developers to launch Rs 17,000 crore worth housing projects by March next year
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel Realty firm Lodha Developers Ltd remains bullish on growth potential in housing market as it plans to launch Rs 17,000 crore worth residential projects by March next to meet consumers an interview with PTI, the company's Executive Director ( Finance) Sushil Kumar Modi noted that the high demand for residential properties , being seen post-Covid pandemic, would not only sustain but grow further, driven by the country's economic growth, income tax relief in the Budget and reduction in interest rates on home loans He sounded confident of achieving the target of selling Rs 21,000 crore worth of properties in the current fiscal year, a 19 per cent increase from the preceding year."We remain in track and are thereby remain confident of achieving Rs 21,000 crore of pre-sales guidance for the current fiscal year," Modi said the company has a huge launch pipeline to meet the target."At the beginning of this fiscal, we had estimated launch of Rs 18,000 crore worth projects but with an acquisition of five land parcels in June quarter, we now have clear visibility of launches at about Rs 25,000 crore for the entire 2025-26," Modi company has already launched Rs 8,000 crore worth of housing projects in the first quarter, which means that Rs 17,000 crore worth of homes will be offered for sales in the remaining three quarters of this fiscal."Strong launch pipeline combined with interest rate reduction on home loans and income tax relief will provide significant amount of tailwainds for our business and help achieve the pre-sales target," Modi Lodha Developers clocked a 10 per cent growth in its sales bookings during April-June period of this fiscal year to Rs 4,450 Indian real estate , Modi mentioned that the launches and sales are skewed towards the second half of the fiscal year because of festival season, which generates an additional on the financial front, Lodha Developers on Saturday reported a 42 per cent increase in consolidated net profit to Rs 675.1 crore for the first quarter of this fiscal net profit stood at Rs 475.9 crore in the year-ago income rose to Rs 3,624.7 crore in the April-June period of the 2025-26 fiscal year from Rs 2,918.3 crore in the corresponding period of the preceding Developers is one of the leading real estate companies in the the 2024-25 fiscal year, the company posted a net profit of Rs 2,766.6 crore on a total income of Rs 1,4169.8 Developers has a strong presence in the residential markets of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Pune and company has delivered 110 million sq ft of real estate and is developing more than 130 million sq ft under its ongoing and planned portfolio.
