PMO snubs tax dept, sets up new GAAR panel
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday constituted an expert committee on the general anti-avoidance rules (GAAR), in a move being seen as a prelude to diluting the rules and ease the concerns of nervous investors.
The new panel under Parthasarathi Shome, director and chief executive of Icrier, the Delhi-based think tank, has been tasked with not just finalizing the guidelines by September, but even hold consultations - a task that was being performed by a committee comprising representatives from the revenue department, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) and tax experts that had been set up by former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. In UPA-1, Shome was an advisor to P Chidambaram who is widely tipped to return as finance minister.