Benign Assessment Procedure for diamond businesses permits acceptance of declared trading profit at a prescribed percentage of turnover.
The Benign Assessment Procedure for diamond manufacturing and trading directs acceptance of declared trading profits where an assessee reports income equal to or higher than 6% of turnover for that business in an assessment year. Assessees must maintain separate books of accounts. Acceptance at that rate for a year is not precedent. The procedure is excluded where assessment follows search, requisition or survey actions, where substantial deductions are claimed under specified chapters, or where information of escapement exists. The prescribed rate will be reviewed annually and the instruction is issued under the administrative power in the Income-tax Act.

Securities lending and borrowing not treated as transfer for income tax purposes and not subject to securities transaction tax.
The circular confirms that securities lending and borrowing under SEBI's SLB framework is covered by the statutory exclusion from the definition of transfer in income tax law, so lending is not treated as a transfer for income tax purposes, and that lending/borrowing transactions do not fall within the charging provisions for securities transaction tax and thus are not liable to that tax.

Extension of TDS/TCS return due date grants additional time and waives penalty exposure for delayed filing of quarterly returns.
Under section 119(2)(a) the Board extends the due date for quarterly TDS and TCS statements for the quarter ending 30 September 2007, under section 200(3) and the proviso to section 206C(3), to 29 February 2008 and provides that delay in filing those returns will not attract penalty for that period.

Withholding on cooling charges treated as contract payments; apply contractor withholding rules rather than rent withholding.
Cooling charges paid by customers to cold storage owners are not rent because preservation by mechanical process is the primary function and customers acquire no right to use space or machinery; therefore Section 194-I does not apply, and such cooling charges should be treated as contractual service payments subject to withholding under Section 194-C.

Compulsory scrutiny of large refunds requires manual selection where automated systems fail to record prepaid tax evidence.
Compulsory scrutiny applies to returns claiming high value refunds; where CASS fails to pick such cases because prepaid tax credits are not recorded at processing for lack of documentary evidence and subsequent rectifications are not captured in the AST, those omitted refund cases must be identified and selected for scrutiny through manual intervention in networked stations.