Ergo Update

The Government of Maharashtra notified the Maharashtra State Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments (Amendment) Act, 2023 (New Amendment) in the Official Gazette on 6 April 2023, pursuant to the Governor’s assent to the same. This New Amendment amends the Maharashtra State Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Act, 1975 (Maharashtra Professional Tax Act), and the same has been made effective from 1 April 2023.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has been bringing in a plethora of changes to the existing landscape of the alternative asset industry. The SEBI circular no. SEBI/HO/IMD/DF6/CIR/P/2020/24 dated 5 February 2020, which introduced the template(s) for Private Placement Memorandum (PPM) for alternative investment funds (AIFs) marked the beginning of this slew of changes.

Over the past year, the Union Government has taken incremental steps towards regulating online gaming with ‘real money’. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) was made the nodal ministry for online gaming and e-sports as part of multi-sports events.

The Hyderabad Bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (Tribunal) recently ruled that “colourable” devices adopted to take undue benefit of law should be looked through to determine the real nature of the transaction and accordingly denied exemption from tax under Section 54F of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (IT Act).

The alternative asset industry is the pulse of any growing economy, and to keep up with the dynamism of a growing economy, the industry itself must constantly evolve. The evolution of the industry requires a strong support in the form of a conducive regulatory landscape within which the industry operates.

The Hon’ble Finance Minister had presented the Finance Bill 2023 on 1st February 2023 which essentially focused on encouraging domestic manufacturing and gave effect to several decisions taken in the GST Council Meeting. The Finance Bill 2023 which proposed such changes was presented and passed by the Lok Sabha on 24th March 2023.

On 27 March 2023, a two Judge bench of the Supreme Court of India (SC) in a group of matters titled State Bank of India & Ors. v. Rajesh Agarwal & Ors inter alia upheld the decision of the Telangana High Court (HC) in Rajesh Agarwal v. Reserve Bank of India & Ors, 2020 SCC OnLine TS 2021.

Surrogacy, globally, has been a boon for couples facing infertility and equally been in controversy due to medical, legal and ethical concerns. While, simply put, surrogacy, is the process of a surrogate mother carrying a child for someone else may be a couple (parents) or single woman. In all its practicality, the process can be as complex as involving 3 classes of people i.e., (i) surrogate mother; (ii) commissioning or intending parent(s); and (iii) genetic or donor mother / father.

The Government of Karnataka notified the Karnataka Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments (Amendment) Act, 2023 (New Amendment) in the Official Gazette on 14 March 2023, pursuant to the Governor’s assent to the same on 13 March 2023. The New Amendment amends the Karnataka Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Act, 1976 (Karnataka Professional Tax Act), and the same will be effective from 1 April 2023. In this update, we discuss the key changes brought about by the New Amendment from an employment law perspective.

On 3 March 2023, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) issued a set of advisory guidelines to machine-to-machine (M2M) / internet of things (IoT) stakeholders for securing consumer IoT (Guidelines). These Guidelines have been issued pursuant to a technical report released by the Telecommunication Engineering Centre titled “Code of Practice for securing Internet of Things (IoT)” (CoP).