Aadhar to be made mandatory for filing I-T return, applying for PAN card

The government has proposed to make Aadhaar card mandatory for filing income tax return and also applying for permanent account number (PAN). 

The new proposal has been made through an amendment to the Finance Bill. 

Recently, the I-T department had announced a mobile app for paying taxes and tracking of refunds. It had also said it was considering issuing PANs on real time basis using Aadhaar biometric. 

"Income Tax department is considering issuing of Permanent Account Number (PAN) on a real time basis using Aadhaar's e-KYC facility. The proposal is at an initial stage of consideration," Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar had said in a written reply in Lok Sabha on March 10. 

Aadhaar-based e-KYC facility would allow individuals or entities wanting to apply for PAN to verify details such as date of birth or address by way of biometric identification using thumb impressions. 

So far, more than 111 crore Aadhar numbers have been issued. The unique identification number is being used for getting a new SIM card, for opening bank accounts, transfer of subsidies and also for biometric based digital payments under Aadhaar Enabled Payment System. 

As per the government estimate, every year 2.5 crore people across the country apply for PAN cards. 

There are more than 25 crore PAN card holders in the country. 

Source : The Economic Times

INDIA POST SEES A MASSIVE 900% JUMP IN PROFIT AS THE PREFERED PARTNER OF E-COMMERCE BRANDS

If you thought that India Post is all but done for and with the downfall of snail-mail (that's letters and postcards if you didn't get it!) and the closure of Telegram, then you got it all wrong.

India Post has seen an unprecedented profit growth in the past two years piggybacking on the rise of e-commerce and its reach into the remotest corners of India. Where new services Delhivery, Ekart and at times even world-leading couriers may fail - India Post still does it.

Add this to the reliability which makes it the favoured Cash-On-Delivery (COD) channel used by e-commerce brands - led by Amazon - and we have a match made in heaven.

Postal department’s revenues by ways of COD consignments from e-commerce majors has gone up to Rs 1,000 crore in the first nine months of this fiscal, up from Rs 500 crore during the entire whole of FY15, and just Rs 100 crore in FY14. Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad has confirmed it and expects revenue to touch Rs 1500 by end of March; making this an almost tripling growth over last year.

The Department has partnered with e-tailers, including Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, YepMe, Shopclues, for delivering pre-paid as well as CoD orders. Amazon is its largest business partner in e-Commerce

On an average, Amazon sends 3,00,000 packages through India Post every month followed by Snapdeal (80K), Yepme (60K), Myntra (50k) and Flipkart (30K).

The Minister said complete revival of the postal department is his top-most priority.

"I want to see India Post as a big hub of e-commerce, delivery and digital services," Prasad said. His vision may also be based on the fact that RBI had given India Post a banking license in August last year and we may see our post office become a full blown bank from a Non-banking financial entity in near future.

Gone may be the days when Dakiya Dak Laaya was a hit but in today's India it's just transformed into Daakiya Mac Laaya!

Source: http://www.indiatimes.com