CBDT
Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) entered 20 unilateral advance pricing agreements (APAs) with taxpayers on August 29, 2016 and August 30, 2016 with Indian taxpayers in order to reduce litigation by providing certainty in transfer pricing. Further, the taxpayers have the option to rollback the APA for four preceding years. Option for ‘Rollback’ was introduced in 2014 under the APA Scheme which came under Income-tax Act in 2012. The 20 APAs signed pertain to sectors like, information technology, banking and finance, insurance, human resources, pharmaceutical, solar energy, oil and gas, foods and beverages, telecommunications, and NGOs.
SEBI
To improve transparency in spot price discovery at commodity exchanges, SEBI has issued a Circular on Spot Price Polling Mechanism. The exchanges have been asked to display the spot price polling mechanism adopted for every contract on its website from September 29. They also need to give details about the contract, mechanism of spot price polling, method for arrival at spot prices, whether mechanism outsourced to any external agency and criteria for selection of these polling participants. The exchanges can assign a code such A1, A2, A3 for poling participants of a particular contract and reveal his location and price for the day. This information would be updated on exchange website every day for every contract traded on the exchange platform. The exchanges have to review on a monthly basis the prices polled by the participants to identify participants habitually polling unrealistic prices. The exchanges would have to address such complaints in a time-bound manner and keep the audit trail of all such complaints received and the steps taken for redressal.
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