Friday, October 9, 2026
writingonblog uncensored: Tamil Nadu seeks 70% GST share, special package f...
writingonblog uncensored: Tamil Nadu seeks 70% GST share, special package f...: CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Dr N Marie Wilson on Thursday called for a fundamental change in the sharing of GST revenue, arguing th...
Tamil Nadu seeks 70% GST share, special package for exporting states
CHENNAI:
Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Dr N Marie Wilson on Thursday called for a fundamental change in the sharing of GST revenue, arguing that states should retain 70% of the proceeds instead of the current 50:50 split with the Union government.
Making the demand at his first meeting of the GST Council in New Delhi, the minister said states bear more than 60 per cent of public expenditure therefore need a larger share of GST revenues.
Urging the Union Government to come up with special packages for exporting States like Tamil Nadu, he said these should be outside the devolution mechanism and outside GST revenue share, so that the States are motivated to invest further and better in physical and social infrastructure for building a competitive ecosystem.
Drawing attention to several representations received from various trade associations of the State during the pre-GST Council consultative meeting held on September 3, 2026, Wilson highlighted that the differential GST rates on staple foods like rice is anomalous and exemption should be given irrespective of the quantity.
The minister, who was nominated to the Council by Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay, also called for a reduction in the GST rate on job work from 18% to 5%, arguing that the lower rate would ease working-capital pressures on MSMEs and benefit a wide range of industries, from agarbatti manufacturers to automobile companies and exporters.
Dr Wilson also backed backed the proposed Rs 10,000 minimum tax threshold for issuing notices under Sections 73, 74 and 74A of the GST Acts, saying it would reduce compliance burdens on taxpayers facing action over relatively small amounts.
He backed the move to include input tax credit accumulated on capital goods in GST refunds for exporters. He also welcomed the plan to extend refunds under the inverted duty structure to input services, and a looser regime on blocked credits that narrows the list of exclusions. The inverted duty structure arises when inputs are taxed at a higher rate than the finished product. On the last two measures he warned that the revenue loss would fall on the states.
S Nagarajan, the state’s commissioner of commercial taxes, and other senior officials accompanied Dr Wilson.
Wednesday, October 7, 2026
writingonblog uncensored: Four family property deeds to go paperless
writingonblog uncensored: Four family property deeds to go paperless: CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu will make the registration of four types of family property deeds paperless from November 2, allowing documents to be cr...
Four family property deeds to go paperless
CHENNAI:
Tamil Nadu will make the registration of four types of family property deeds paperless from November 2, allowing documents to be created, submitted and processed online while requiring the parties to appear before the sub-registrar only for authentication, according to a government order issued by the Commercial Taxes and Registration Department on Wednesday.
The move covers settlement deeds, release deeds, partition deeds and revocation of settlement deeds relating to family arrangements, and is part of the Registration Department's continuing shift towards digital registration under Project STAR 3.0.
According to the GO, the digitally executed deeds and supporting documents will be submitted through the online registration facility and processed through an electronic workflow. After registration, the document will be digitally sent to the citizen's login and preserved in the STAR system.
However, the paperless system will not do away with the physical appearance of the parties. They will still have to appear before the concerned sub-registrar for identification, Aadhaar authentication and completion of the prescribed registration formalities, the GO said.
The move is aimed at reducing the repeated handling, movement and scanning of paper documents and the need to maintain physical records at different stages of the registration process. It is also expected to improve traceability and retrieval of registered documents.
The government order said the Registration Department had proposed the expansion of paperless registration as part of its wider technology-led reforms to make registration services simpler, more transparent and citizen-friendly.
The department began computerisation with the launch of the STAR platform in 2000 and introduced paperless registration for selected categories of documents in January this year.
The government had subsequently introduced the first phase of Anywhere Registration in August, covering first sale of plots by promoters and first sale of flats by builders along with consecutive deposit of title deeds.
The latest expansion follows an announcement made by the Commercial Taxes and Registration Minister in the Assembly on September 7 that the four categories of family-arrangement documents would be brought under paperless registration.
The GO said the November 2 rollout would be subject to software readiness, completion of necessary workflow modifications and training of departmental officials and stakeholders.
Chennai port turns to digital tracking to ease export container flows
CHENNAI:
Chennai Port Authority has launched a digital system 'Port Setu' to track export containers on the road between inland warehouses and the port gate. It is the first step toward making gate entry fully paperless.
Port Setu, uses automatic number plate recognition, optical character recognition and RFID readers, linked to the customs ICEGATE platform. It records the time each trailer takes to travel from a container freight station (CFS) to the port. It went live on September 17 and was formally launched on Thursday.
The system, developed by the Chennai chapter of the National Association of Container Freight Stations (NACFS), went live on September 17 and was formally launched on Wednesday. It forms the first phase of an Intelligent Vehicle Monitoring System (IVMS) being implemented under the central government's One Nation One Port Process (ONOP) initiative to standardise and digitise procedures across Indian ports.
For the freight stations, the main promise is more efficient use of trucks. Port Setu gives them real-time visibility of trailer arrivals at the port. The authority expects this to cut turnaround times and allow one extra round trip for every six made.
The next phase is expected to take the system closer to a paperless port gate. Under Phase 2 of the IVMS, the container terminals will digitise the verification of seal intactness. Chennai Port Authority envisages that this will eventually make gate-entry procedures completely digital and paperless, a release stated.
Sachin S Kurve, chairperson of Chennai Port Authority and KPL, said the system would provide greater visibility of container movements and help CFSs optimise trailer management within the port's jurisdiction.
writingonblog uncensored: Rangarajan urges GST Council to keep UPI payments ...
writingonblog uncensored: Rangarajan urges GST Council to keep UPI payments ...: CHENNAI: Former Reserve Bank of India governor C Rangarajan has urged the GST Council to keep UPI person-to-merchant transactions above ₹2,0...
Tuesday, October 6, 2026
Rangarajan urges GST Council to keep UPI payments tax-free
CHENNAI:
Former Reserve Bank of India governor C Rangarajan has urged the GST Council to keep UPI person-to-merchant transactions above ₹2,000 outside the GST net, arguing that India should first decide whether the digital payment system needs to carry a cost and whether now is the right time to impose it.
The 57th GST Council meeting is scheduled to be held in New Delhi on October 8.
Speaking at an event marking the launch of Cashless Nation: How UPI Changed Everything at IIT-Madras, authored by Dr Santanu Paul and B Sambamurthy, Rangarajan said there was a strong case for treating UPI as a public good, while cautioning that this did not necessarily mean it had to remain free forever.
“There is no general rule that no price should be charged on public goods. There are public goods on which prices are charged,” he said, citing museums and parks as examples.
The more immediate question, he said, was whether the time had come to impose a charge on UPI transactions.
“There is also the argument that 75% of transactions will not bear any charge. But that cuts both ways. If 75% of transactions will not carry a cost, why introduce the charge at all?” he said.
Rangarajan suggested that the cost of maintaining the payment infrastructure could instead be recovered at a later stage, perhaps over a five- or 10-year period.
“The question to ask today is whether today is the right time to do it,” he said.
He also pointed to a tax consequence of introducing a fee. Once a charge is levied for a payment service, it would constitute a taxable service and attract GST, requiring the government to determine the applicable rate.
“The moment you levy a charge, it automatically attracts GST, because it is a service provided, and GST will have to be paid,” Rangarajan said.
“My response is very clear. I would urge the GST Council, when it next meets, to come out clearly and say that GST should not be levied,” he said.
The authors of the book, meanwhile, highlighted the features that helped UPI become a mass-market payment system, particularly its interoperability and low cost.
The book's authors, Santanu Paul and B Sambamurthy, argued that UPI's success rested on four features: it is instant, easy to use, interoperable and free.
Paul said its architecture reflected what Nandan Nilekani, Infosys co-founder, calls the "four-party model". Any app on the sender's side can transact with any app on the receiver's side, and either party can draw on any bank account. Two fintech companies and two banks thus deliver the efficiency of a payment within a single bank.
Some of India's largest lenders resisted the design, Paul said, because it threatened a business in which payments had long been something customers paid for. "Some of the biggest banks in the country were trying to crush the four-party model," he said.
Sambamurthy said the regulator made a "conscious decision" to mandate interoperability because UPI is a public good. That contrasts with systems elsewhere, where users can transact only within one platform's network.
Zero fees also transformed merchant acceptance. Before UPI, taking electronic payments typically required a point-of-sale terminal costing about ₹10,000. A QR code now does the job at almost no upfront cost.
Former Reserve Bank of India governor C Rangarajan has urged the GST Council to keep UPI person-to-merchant transactions above ₹2,000 outside the GST net, arguing that India should first decide whether the digital payment system needs to carry a cost and whether now is the right time to impose it.
The 57th GST Council meeting is scheduled to be held in New Delhi on October 8.
Speaking at an event marking the launch of Cashless Nation: How UPI Changed Everything at IIT-Madras, authored by Dr Santanu Paul and B Sambamurthy, Rangarajan said there was a strong case for treating UPI as a public good, while cautioning that this did not necessarily mean it had to remain free forever.
“There is no general rule that no price should be charged on public goods. There are public goods on which prices are charged,” he said, citing museums and parks as examples.
The more immediate question, he said, was whether the time had come to impose a charge on UPI transactions.
“There is also the argument that 75% of transactions will not bear any charge. But that cuts both ways. If 75% of transactions will not carry a cost, why introduce the charge at all?” he said.
Rangarajan suggested that the cost of maintaining the payment infrastructure could instead be recovered at a later stage, perhaps over a five- or 10-year period.
“The question to ask today is whether today is the right time to do it,” he said.
He also pointed to a tax consequence of introducing a fee. Once a charge is levied for a payment service, it would constitute a taxable service and attract GST, requiring the government to determine the applicable rate.
“The moment you levy a charge, it automatically attracts GST, because it is a service provided, and GST will have to be paid,” Rangarajan said.
“My response is very clear. I would urge the GST Council, when it next meets, to come out clearly and say that GST should not be levied,” he said.
The authors of the book, meanwhile, highlighted the features that helped UPI become a mass-market payment system, particularly its interoperability and low cost.
The book's authors, Santanu Paul and B Sambamurthy, argued that UPI's success rested on four features: it is instant, easy to use, interoperable and free.
Paul said its architecture reflected what Nandan Nilekani, Infosys co-founder, calls the "four-party model". Any app on the sender's side can transact with any app on the receiver's side, and either party can draw on any bank account. Two fintech companies and two banks thus deliver the efficiency of a payment within a single bank.
Some of India's largest lenders resisted the design, Paul said, because it threatened a business in which payments had long been something customers paid for. "Some of the biggest banks in the country were trying to crush the four-party model," he said.
Sambamurthy said the regulator made a "conscious decision" to mandate interoperability because UPI is a public good. That contrasts with systems elsewhere, where users can transact only within one platform's network.
Zero fees also transformed merchant acceptance. Before UPI, taking electronic payments typically required a point-of-sale terminal costing about ₹10,000. A QR code now does the job at almost no upfront cost.
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