This new year, you will see changes in the way you shop and bank and will have to pay more for certain vehicles. There will be new rules which will have a big impact on the way you use your ATM card as well.
You will have to link your Permanent Account Number (PAN) with Aadhaar by March 2020 after the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) extended the December 31-deadline.
According to section 139 AA (2) of the I-T, every person who has PAN, the 10-digit alphanumeric number, as on July 1, 2017, and is eligible to obtain Aadhaar, must intimate his Aadhaar number to tax authorities.
The policy-making body for the income tax department has said that in case a person fails to link PAN and Aadhaar card, then the PAN allotted to the person will be considered as invalid.
You will not have to pay any charge for your National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) transactions. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has directed banks not to charge savings account holders for NEFT from January 1, 2020, to give “further impetus to digital retail payments”.
You won’t have to pay Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) charges on transactions through RuPay cards and UPI payments from this new year.
Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had asked banks earlier this month not to charge MDR on payments via RuPay, UPI from January 1 with a view to driving digital payments.
The move will apply to all companies with a turnover of Rs 50 crore or more. MDR is the fee paid by a merchant to a bank for accepting digital payments.
The labor ministry will restore pension commutation or advance partial withdrawal under the Employees’ Pension Scheme of the Employees’ Provident Find Organisation (EPFO) from January 1, 2020.
Under this facility, a pensioner is given a lump sum of the pension in advance and after that, their monthly pension is deducted by one-third for the next 15 years. After 15 years, pensioners are eligible for the full pension.
The move, which comes 10 years after the provision was withdrawn, will benefit around 630,000 pensioners.
State Bank of India (SBI) has announced that its magnetic debit card won’t work after December 31, 2019. Customers will have to upgrade their old cards to the more secure EMV chip and PIN-based debit cards. SBI had informed its customers through its tweet asking them to replace the existing SBI debit cards through the new EMV cards.
Tata Motors, Toyota Motors, Mahindra and Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai Motors India, Mercedes-Benz, Kia Motors and Nissan Motors India are going to raise prices of their vehicles from January.
Two-wheeler company Hero MotoCorp has also announced an increase in prices of its vehicles from January. The prices of all the motorcycles and scooters of the company will increase by Rs 2000.
The ‘Sabka Biswas Yojana’, introduced for resolution of old pending disputed cases related to service tax and excise duty, is going to end on December 31, 2019. It is unlikely to be extended further.
The GST Network has decided to make Aadhaar authentication or physical verification mandatory for new dealers from January 2020 to check malpractices in Goods and Services Tax.
The state government will start the Arundhati Gold Scheme by January for registered newly-married couples. The bride will get Rs 30,000 to buy gold under the scheme.
The annual income of the bride and her father should not be more than Rs 500,000 per year and the minimum age of the bride and groom has to be 18 and 21 years to avail the benefit under the scheme.
The Assam government has said the scheme is aimed to promote marriage registrations and prevent under-age marriages in the state.
