The Taxman plays a sweet and sour tune!

Chidambaram (Mr. P. Chidambaram, the honorable Finance Minister Of India, not be confues with Chidambaram, the town) does it again. Unveils a budget which has created a lot of discussion. What is the interesting thing about his budgets? You cannot generally fight over them! You may like a few points and dislike some others but by and large the chunk of his budgets seems to be logical (and keeps the voters happy - which is quite a happy balance as far as the government is concerned.)

I haven’t gone through the whole budget, and lets face it I wouldn't understand half of it:) Nonetheless even I could not escape one or two points glaring out of me.

1. Abolishing section 88. Bad news for me...I had just started investing in a pension scheme. However I am not very sad, as those investments are not bad in the long run. And I am not a very big proponent of saving only for saving tax.

2. Standard deduction is out too. However it is compensated in another manner. A consolidated savings of 1 lakh can be removed from your income before tax. This is really good according to me rather than the old 20% gig.

3. In conjunction with the exemption level of 1.25 lakhs it seems to me that what they are saying is that if I earn 4 lakhs and save 1 lakh then my taxable income is 4 - 1 - 1.25 = 1.75 lakhs. Of course I will not wager my reputation on my understanding of this calculation. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

4. The limit of 5 lakhs beyond which you could not get a tax break has been remove and there is no limit for tax-break based savings.

5. Surcharge still exists but only for an annual income of 10 lakhs and above. I guess this is fair.

6. A "fringe" tax of 0.1 % on withdrawal on "large" sums of money. Problem here is that the decided large sum is a paltry INR10,000. Supposedly it will help curb the black marketers. My take, simple harassment is sure to follow. People better than me have spoken about this at the MadMan's shack and Anon's adobe. It almost feels like one of the things that us sure to get repealed. In fact it seems that even Chidambaram is not very keen to support his stand

So all in all it seems a more sweet rather than a sour tune.

Well, that's my two annas worth of views. I will update the post once I know more. Please feel free to correct me if I any of the stuff I have written above seems wrong. Also feel free to post your thoughts on the budget here. One good site for Indian finance is www.indiainfoline.com. I am adding the specific links to various articles about the budget on my links site too.

Deviation: I was happy to see my salary this week. The sum of the fact that I was allowing my tax to be deducted at source throughout the year and the fact that I did manage to save a wee bit has helped me get a salary this month without a tax cut. I think this is the first time I have got a salary in February which was in 5 digits. Thanks to my darling for forcing me to save!!! Of course she ain't too happy I am spending it all again!!!

UPDATE: one more link, this time from MDI

UPDATE 2: Lots of updates on basis of useful comments to the blogs.
First Prateek informs me that the exemptable income is INR 1 lakhs and not 1.25 lakhs. My Bad!!!

Two, Madman clears my confusion over the calculation of the tax. I quote his comment
" If you earn Rs. 4 Lakhs and manage to put away Rs. 1 Lakh in instruments, your taxable income is Rs. 3 Lakhs.


Out of this, the first Rs. 1 Lakh is exempt from tax. One the balance, you pay tax as follows:

Rs. 1-1.5 L - 10% = 5000
Rs. 1.5-2.5 L - 20% = 20000
Balance Rs. 50000 - 30% = 15000

So your total tax = Rs. 40000"

So again I stand corrected.

Lastly Anon seems to be suggesting that even investment into MG and equities would be counted into savings. That I think is good news.

Changes in Blogger Comments(for the better)

Folks, it seems like the Blogger guys have changed their comments strategy. Now anyone can comment with their own names/nicks without having to be a part of Blogger. So no more anaonymous nonsense. Hopefully it will not result in spam comments. I have a humble request to all of you. Please try this scheme by posting a comment or two as a test for this blog. I am specifically looking for non Blogger-member's comments.

While we are riding the comment trail it would be very gratifying if people who read me on news aggregators pop over once in a while to comment. just feels nice to actually know what goes through you mind when you read my posts (Note To Self : do unto other what you would want others to do unto you:))

My New 'Watering Hole'!!!

Hey folks, as you can see my entries here have been intermittent. One reason is that I have not anticipated the way this blog has taken shape. I had expected to put any crap here. However I seem to find myself trying real hard to be informative/interesting. In a way this has become what Robert Scoble calls a commentary blog.

Though unanticipated I like this new form. This is a place where I try to put up essays. A place where I can polish what little skills I have in writing, English, rhetoric and imagination - not necessarily in that order.

Nonetheless I still want to blog every other day pointing out some cool site I have visited, a cool gadget I know of, some one-liner comments on people's blogs etc. I would not like to crowd this blog with such postings. So I have started a new blog called Brij's Watering Hole.

This will be where I put arbitrary stuff. Check it out and enjoy it!!!
I do need to stock it up with feeds, permanent links etc. Should be ready by 14th Feb.

Thank you for your time:)

Late Winter; Drifting fog, The Lake is clouded.

I have been researching a lot into Zen in the last few days. I have always seen and felt the D.T.Suzuki side of Zen. You know - the part of Zen that immediately connects to you. The part of you which speaks of instant action, instant nirvana, of freedom of the senses and actions. Yup, the part that feels like hippism. Well a lot of it connects to me too. I romanticise about the discipline of Zen way of life; about the ideas that are so powerful that they cannot be spoken for speech destroys the very ideas it tries to explain.

Anyways, this last month I decided that it is time to take a critical look into the whole Zen religion and how it is spreading in the West. What I have ended with is a lot more confusion than I started with. I realised that I was too naive to think that just because the root idea of Zen might be desirable the whole religion itself would be sacrosanct and above reproach, for after all the disciples do make the religion. More importantly I was faced with a question on what is really so attractive about Zen to me?

This question is important because I do not feel attracted to Buddhism the same way I feel attracted to Zen. My normal answer to this question was that Zen is a religion rooted in everyday life. A religion where you practice it, not by some fancy mumbo-jumbo (or so I thought), but by living life everyday doing one's karma. However in time (and after reading a lot of essays - which is supposedly very not Zen) I feel that maybe it is my attraction to Japanese history that makes me like Zen.

I like the whole samurai honour thing - even though I have a lot of reservations about the caste system itself. Maybe it's the Indian history in me where honour and pride took highest place. Whatever it be I am always enamoured by all the different ceremonies and the different arts of Japan. The only issue is the question whether I am only attracted to the saccharine version (the romantic version in the books and the movies)?

How does all this tie in with Zen? The thread I follow with Japan is the same thread I follow with Zen. Without knowing the people practising it, without actually seeing the religion in action I am attracted to it. So what I am really attracted to? The image of Zen that I think is right? If so would it be a religion? Would it not be just a philosophy? How does a religion whose roots exist in Buddhism make sense of the samurai code? How does it support war and Anti-Semitism (as happened in WWII)?

Lots of questions with no answer. Even more so because for answers you need to look towards books or "gurus". How do we know they are right? How do know that the "Wise Man" is not just another car salesman telling you exactly what you want to hear? Paranoia?

I am still looking up the material so I might indeed have some answers soon...or not.

One more monologue, one that is basically scattered all over the place. Very Un-Zen-like. And I have more to say about mentors, gurus and babas. I guess it can wait.