Many rules –ranging from Cheque payment, LPG Cylinder prices, GST to UPI Transaction payment–that have a major impact on the lives of the common man are going to change from January 1.
Since these rules are going to affect your everyday life, it is important to know more about these changes in detail. Here are some rules that are going to change from January 1.
1. Cheque payments
To keep a check on banking frauds, the Reserve Bank of India decided to introduce the ”positive pay system” for cheque payments. In this system, there may be a requirement of re-confirmation of the key details for the payments above Rs 50,000. This rule of a positive pay system will come into effect from January 1, 2021. The positive pay system facility can be availed by the account holders of their choice. Banks may think about making it necessary for cheques with amounts of Rs 5 lakh and higher.
2. Contactless card transactions limit
From January 1, the RBI has said to increase the limits from Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000 for contactless card transactions and e-mandates for regularly occurring transactions through cards and UPI. The move by RBI is to enhance digital payment. This will ensure a safe and secure manner, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das has said that this will depend on the mandate and discretion of customers.
3. Four-wheelers should have compulsory FasTags: From January 1, 2021, all four-wheelers should have FasTags, the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said in a notification issued. The Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989 were amended for this. FASTag will be mandatory for four-wheelers or M&N category of vehicles that were sold before December 1, 2017.
4. On selected phones, WhatsApp will not be available: WhatsApp is likely to stop working on select iPhone and Android smartphones starting 2021. The Facebook-owned messaging app could withdraw support for smartphones running on older versions of iOS, Android, Kai OS, etc. Reports suggest that starting January 1, 2021, WhatsApp will stop offering support on devices that are not running on iOS 9 or Android 4.0.3 or newer. This means that, if your iPhone or Android smartphone is not running on the mentioned software, WhatsApp may stop working on your device. The FAQ page states that smartphones need to be running on Android version 4.0.3 and iOS 9 and newer to be able to use WhatsApp.
5.Prices of car hiked: Maruti Suzuki will raise prices of its models starting from January. The price increase will vary for different models. MG Motor will be raising the prices of its offerings in India. The company has claimed that they will be increasing the cost by up to three percent in order to counter the impact of higher input costs. Renault India will be increasing the prices of all its cars in India. The company confirmed that car prices would be increased by up to Rs 28,000 from January.
6.Price hike of two-wheelers: To offset the impact of rising input costs, Hero MotoCorp will increase the prices of its vehicles by up to Rs 1,500 from January 1, 2021, to offset the impact of rising input costs.
7. Google Pay web app
Google Pay is all set to kill the user to user payments facility on its web app and add a fee for instant money transfers in January. Till now, the customers were able to manage payments and send money over the mobile app or from pay.google.com. According to the recent notification of Google, the web app site will no longer work from January 2021.
8. LPG prices
On the first day of every month, the oil marketing companies revise the prices of LPG on the basis of crude rates in the global markets.
9. GST-registered small business
The businesses with a turnover of up to Rs 5 crores will require to file only 4 GST sales returns, or GSTR-3B, instead of 12 ( now) from January, as per PTI. This change would impact about 94 lakh taxpayers, i.e. about 92 percent of the entire GST tax base. Now, small taxpayers would be filing only eight returns (four GSTR-3B and four GSTR-1 returns) yearly.
