March payments: TDS relief for tax-payers

Taxpayers are to get relief on their tax deducted at source (TDS) obligations with regard to their payments for expenses in March — the last month of the financial year for income-tax purposes.
“They will now get six months time to deposit the TDS related to payments made in March and also escape disallowance of expense under the Income-Tax law.
This relief forms part of the amendments moved to the Finance Bill 2008, which has been passed by Parliament recently. The important thing is disallowance of expenses will not be there in such cases,” Mr G. Ramaswamy, Central Council Member, ICAI, told.The amendments to the TDS provisions have been made on a retrospective basis from assessment year 2005-06.

TDS on Service Tax on Rent paid....Dilemma resolved

CBDT has clarified in its latest circular that TDS will not be deducted on the service tax element included in rent paid. The Circular clarifies that “Service tax paid by the tenant does not partake the nature of income of the landlord. The landlord only acts as the collecting agency for government for collection of service tax. Therefore, it has been decided that tax deduction at source (TDS) under section 194-I of the I-T Act would be required to be made on the amount of rent paid/payable without including the service tax.” This comes as a major relief to a large section of tax payers.