VENTURE CAPITAL POST

India’s gold market is threatened as the government revealed a new jewelry tax regulation, requiring a 1 percent sales tax on gold jewelry. Import taxes has not been changed, even though jewellers have expected the government to eliminate the 10 percent import duty.

The U.S. Congress is moving this week toward putting off until 2015 any conclusive action on a tangle of Internet tax issues, including online access taxes and online state sales taxes.

Standard & Poor's on Tuesday cast doubt on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ability to repair Japan's tattered finances less than two weeks away from a snap election, after Moody's downgraded the country's sovereign debt rating.

Japanese companies overwhelmingly want Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to delay or scrap a planned tax increase, a Reuters poll shows, highlighting concerns that it could derail a fragile economic recovery.

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda does not need to convince Japanese people like Kazue Shibata that deflation brings problems, but getting them to believe that higher prices will make things better is proving to be a harder sell.

Japan's industrial output rose in September at the fastest pace in eight months in a tentative sign of recovery in factory activity, offering some relief for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as he moves closer to making a decision on a second sales tax hike.

Japanese retail sales rose 2.3 percent in September from a year earlier, government data showed on Tuesday, suggesting consumer spending is gradually picking up.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Sunday he remained "neutral" on whether to proceed with a hike in Japan's sales tax to 10 percent, adding that decision would hinge on the strength of economic indicators for the current quarter.

The Japanese government got the approval of a special panel to raise the national sales tax by 2014.