15th Finance Commission

While the 13th Finance Commission gave a template for preparing the reports of SFCs, it was not acted upon because these are not mandatory recommendations

'Strain on exchequer arising from sops to industry, bad loan waivers, etc., must be discussed'

This is lower than Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's expectation Rs 1 trillion would be released by end of September

The previous five years saw the states' share, except for 2019-20, in between 34.5% and 37%, whereas the recommendation was to give them a 42% share

A top govt official told Business Standard that internally, the plan for PDMA is unlikely to be revived

Tied grant 60% of total Rs 2.37 trn allocated to rural local bodies

Singh has been the chairman of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management review committee and also served as member of the Rajya Sabha (2008 -2014)

Here's a selection of Business Standard opinion pieces for the day

The Centre's current deficit glide path reveals a conservative stance on growth

Says states don't have fiscal flexibility for exigencies as Centre has

Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Kumar Modi highlighted that the share of divisible pool is slowly shrinking as the ''cess and surcharge'' component in Gross Tax revenue is increasing

Singh was addressing the sixth edition of the national conference on economics of competition law.

Besides merging the rate slabs of 12 per cent and 18 per cent, the GST Council could consider phasing out exemptions to those commodities that were subject to VAT duty by the States

Here's a selection of Business Standard opinion pieces for the day

Once the pandemic is over, the states need to garner more own revenues to spend more on meritorious heads such as education, health and infrastructure

Underperformance of GST must be addressed

Here's a selection of Business Standard opinion pieces for the day

15th Finance Commission has suggested merging 12 and 18% tax rates

The Commission asserts salary incomes shown by taxpayers are understated by 50%, finds scope to extract more direct tax by chasing evasion without changing tax rates; experts aren't convinced

In a Q&A, the chairman of the 15th Finance Commission is emphatic that cooperative federalism remains robust and dwells on the possibilty of dividing agro infra cess between Centre and states