RBI Notifies Changes in Market Hours due to COVID-19 outbreak

RBI Notifies Changes in Market Hours due to COVID-19 outbreak

RBI Notifies Changes in Market Hours

The unprecedented situation created by the COVID-19 outbreak has necessitated lockdowns, social distancing, restrictions on movement of people and non-essential activities, work from home arrangements and business continuity plans. The resultant dislocations have adversely impacted the functioning of financial markets. Staff and IT resources have been severely affected, posing operational and logistic risks. The thinning out of activity is impacting market liquidity and increasing volatility of financial prices.

RBI, in order to minimise these risks and to ensure that market participants maintain adequate checks and supervisory controls while optimising thin resources and ensuring safety of personnel, has decided to revise trading hours for various markets as under:

• Object of assessment proceedings is not to find empirically correct solution on every fact issue – HC
• Penalty u/s 270A deleted as assessee filed revised computation during scrutiny
• Penalty u/s 271B for unfilled column 40 in Tax Audit Report Form 3CD deleted by ITAT
• Merely ex-parte rectifying computation without amending assessment order not make it nullity- ITAT
• Once assessee discharges primary onus, it shifts to AO to bring evidence to contrary – ITAT