Well, I mostly write about Cricket or Movies, but for this blog post, I decided to go a bit hatke an present to you readers, my analysis of Finance Budget 2015-2016 which was announced recently.
There have been various viewpoints & analysis regarding the Finance Budget in the past few days, and I must admit it has been interesting to read about what many people had to say about the Budget.
I read through various articles on Moneycontrol,com, Taxmann.com & Financial Times & used the information provided there to present my analysis.
Hope it is useful & informative for people who read this blog post..
THE ANALYSIS( Key Highlights of the Finance Budget)
What is in it for the General Public?
- Quoting of PAN Card is must for all transactions above Rs 1 Lakh rupees. ( Well this is done to check if people are offering the gains from such transactions to tax).
2. When you are entering into a property transaction in future.. BEWARE you are not allowed to pay or receive money in excess of Rs 20000 in cash. In case you don't adhere to the rule, well you need to pay a penalty equivalent to the amount of cash you paid or received.
3. Concealment or false disclosure of income will attract a punishment of up to 10 years in jail. Let's hope this is implemented as there are lot of people who disclose only a portion of their wealth & stash the rest of the money in Swiss bank accounts!!
Individual Tax Payers
1. There will be no change in tax slabs. ( This I assume wouldn't please too many of the tax payers across India).
2. Super Senior citizens above the age of 80 years old will get a standard deduction of Rs 80000 in lieu of medical insurance premium.
3. An additional surcharge of 2% is going to be charged on income surpassing 1 crore rupees. This incidentally is going to replace the Wealth Tax.
What's in the budget for the salaried employees??
1. Conveyance Allowance has been increased from Rs 800 to Rs 1600.( That is indeed great news!!)
2. Reimbursement of expenses such as Medical, Travel etc can be claimed as tax exempt income. But employees need to show the bill or receipt of the expenses concerned in order to get it reimbursed & tax free.
3. There will be no changes to the House Property Income & Income from Capital Gains.
Well since, we have would have probably seen discussions & analysis across all English news channels, I decided to put this video in this post to get a different perspective of the key highlights of the Finance Budget.
There would be a deduction of corporate tax rate from 30% to 25%. This is still not yet implemented and even if it is are the employees in general going to benefit from them? Well, only time will tell..
The service tax rate is going to be increase from 12 % to 14%. This is seriously going to empty the pockets of middle class people even more as if you go out to eat or shop in future, be prepared to cough up the 2% extra amount.
New services such as Entertainment, award functions etc will attract service tax. And to add to that, any theater or play or concert you go to in future will be taxed if the ticket costs more than Rs 500.( Well not great for people who frequent theaters across India & who buy tickets for concerts).
The basic excise duty has been increased to 12.5% & the government is accepting the technology boom in India by accepting digitally signed documents such as Invoices & Bills going forward.( Thats goodas it saves lot of time & paper work going forward for all concerned).
This Finance Budget has emphasized on giving immense importance to Power & Infrastructure projects as the Finance Minister has decided to allocate 70,000 crores to boost Infrastructure & power projects.( Well, the common tax payer would hope that much money gets utilized judiciously & not rob the hard earned money of the tax payers.)
What's an union budget without a political angle to it? One amongst the many allocation of funds to promote the Central Government Schemes is to make any contributions to Swacch Bharat campaign tax exempt.( If people want to contribute towards a Swacch Bharat, then stop littering the streets and start keeping your home & surroundings clean. And a person who wants to donate to this campaign will contribute irrespective of the tax exemption incentive added to it. So , I personally don't see any logic in this decision.)
On a whole, it is a safe budget which has given immense importance to boost growth whilst keeping the core of the Indian population ie the middle class & tax payers disappointed as there is not much for them to be pleased about with regards to this budget.
Hi Raghav
ReplyDeleteGood to see you diversifying your Blog in to other relevant areas ; Good summary of the budget ;
One key thing in this budget is the Bold statement by BJP in reducing Corporate Taxes ; This is very similar to Republican Party budgets in USA ; The assumption is if you reduce Corporate Tax , business leaders will be incentivezed to invest more and create jobs and economic activity which will eventually benefit all the citizens ; As opposed to Government doing everything;
However, the Service Tax increase was not required; This unnecessary gives the opposition slogan and headline news of " Reduction of corporate Tax for Rich Industrialists but increase in Service tax for middle class".
Best Wishes for your new topic posts ; Talk about other Social things also ;
Thanks for the appreciation of the analysis of the budget!! That gives me good motivation & inspiration to write more blog posts and especially on many diversified topics.
DeleteYes the reduction of Corporate Taxes is an intriguing decision made by Arun Jaitley as it naturally creates optimism in employees minds that the 5% companies need to pay lesser would be used to create more jobs and will help in increasing salaries. But will that materalise?
The service tax aspect and the fact that income tax slabs rates have been kept the same the last budget is a dampener for the core of the Indian population ie the middle class which is going against the main tool which Modi used to get so many votes in the elections ie to woo the common man & the middle class.
Overall, a safe budget which doesnot make any brave decisions.
Good to see you write on a different topic.
ReplyDeletekeep writing on other issues too. Will make your blog vety diversified
Thanks for the appreciation !! Yes , I will try to diversify my blog as much as possible.
DeleteI will write about other issues too. But the core of my blog posts would be on Cricket & Movies.
But I will make it more viewer friendly so that even the posts on Movies & Cricket won't be repetitive in nature..