What do you think about investing in gold saving schemes of jewellers? I am wary of other products for investing in gold.There are various gold saving schemes offered by jewellers where they provide an installment scheme to customers to buy gold jewellery, after which they pay the last installment. However, there are various factors to be considered before investing in such schemes. First, these schemes are not regulated. Moreover, they only enable you to buy gold jewellery, where making charges could be high. Additionally, if you want to invest in gold and not jewellery, you could consider investing through a gold exchange-traded fund or e-gold. if you want to go for the gold savings scheme offered by jewellers, make sure you understand the conditions and be sure about the reputation of the jeweller.Are multi-cap funds better products for investing than equity diversified ones? The former has given higher returns last yearMulti-cap equity funds ha

Investing: Rishi Nathany

Business Standard

What this Budget may herald, and the impact should it happenThe FM has announced the deferral of implementation of the General Anti Avoidance Rules (GAAR) by two years and the grandfathering of investments made before 30 August 2010. This break of two years is expected to provide an opportunity to the tax administration to gear up the machinery to administer the GAAR. One should not forget that even in the absence of statutory GAAR, the judicial GAAR has always been prevalent in India. The business community is keenly waiting for the certainty on interplay between the GAAR and the SAAR (including LOB clause in tax treaties).  The FM has merely announced where GAAR and SAAR are both in force, only one will apply to a given case.Given that the GAAR is now proposed to be deferred and that there is a need to raise more revenue to reduce the fiscal deficit, Budget 2013 may introduce more specific anti-avoidance rules (SAAR) to address the known tax avoidance arrangem

EXPERT VIEW: Rahul Garg

MCX-SX, which launched its equity platform on Monday, has chosen to lessen the influence of financial stocks on its benchmark index SX-40 compared to the main gauges of other exchanges. The bourse kept the financial sector's weightage on the index at 22 per cent, the lowest among the three exchanges, by keeping away State Bank of India from its main index. The weightage of the oil and gas and technology sectors on the SX-40 is similar to that on the Sensex. The influence of consumer goods on the new index exceeds the sectorâ€™s influence on Sensex and Nifty. SX-40 has returned 16.6 per cent in 2012-13 so far, compared with 15 per cent by the Nifty and 13.5 per cent by the Sensex. SX-40 was able to give higher returns, thanks to the presence of United Spirits and Titan Industries

MCX-SX goes live

This refers to Anjani Kumarâ€™s article â€œZeroing in on the â€˜parallel economyâ€™â€ (February 6). The present taxation system is chaotic and fragmented. The governmentâ€™s sole purpose is collecting revenue, with total disregard for value addition and creation of wealth. Entrepreneurship â€“ the engine of growth and generation of productive employment â€“ is strangulated at every step, by way of multifarious regressive, anti-social and complex indirect taxes. Octroi, excise duty, value-added tax and service tax are a few examples. Every indirect tax instigates tax avoidance, resulting in a loss of direct tax and creation of a â€œparallel economyâ€. We should learn from the US tax system and take one step ahead, where indirect taxes are minimal and income tax compliance is 90 per cent against Indiaâ€™s 31 per cent. The fallacy of income tax is that it squeezes the capital. Personal savings, the staple food of economy as capital, is taking refuge in gold and needless property, buildi

Letters: Value addition is the key

A price index for agri commodities: A Business Standard and Indicus Analytics initiative

Indicus price monitor

EducationKey developmentsGovernment opting for regulations instead of legislation wherever possible to bring in reforms. Examples include drafting UGC guidelines on twinning to encourage foreign collaborations in education owing to non-clearance of the FEI Bill, 2010, that permitted foreign institutes to set up campuses in India

Budget 2013-14: Wishlist

Every Monday, Business Standard analyses one familyâ€™s financesand suggests a suitable way forward

Case study

Expand market reach via better surveillance and innovation

The third stock exchange

Afzal Guru's execution should cause India to introspect

After a hanging

How can I limit the tax outgo on bonus salary earned? As bonus is fully taxable in your hand, tax is applicable when the bonus is paid. If you have huge tax liability in one year, you can request your employer to pay the bonus in the next year, pushing your tax liability to the next year. This especially helps if tax rates have been or are likely to be reduced.What if the employer does not agree to a shift to the next year?If the bonus is to be paid in the current year, you can at best spread the tax liability over the remaining months of the financial year concerned. This will lower your one-time liability and ensure better cash flow management. If your employer deducts tax on bonus before paying it, make sure you give your tax saving investment details to the employer to get higher bonus in hand.

Tipping point

This refers to Anjani Kumarâ€™s article â€œZeroing in on the â€˜parallel economyâ€™â€ (February 6). It is shocking to know that only 1.5 million people declare income of over Rs 10 lakh a year. The most honest tax payer in the country is the salaried person, who doesnâ€™t have the option to hide income. However, some senior-level companies have worked out various types of reimbursements, taking advantage of loopholes in the Income Tax (I-T) laws. I would like to make a few suggestions to help plug such loopholes and increase the exchequerâ€™s revenue:First, remove all exemptions of any type, except critical and chronic illness. No deductions under Sections 80C or 80 CC should be allowed. Second, the I-T rate imposed on the annual income between zero and Rs 10 lakh should be 10 per cent, so that no person is out of the I-T net. This will help catch organisations that give salaries in cash lower than amounts shown on employeesâ€™ income slip. Third, PAN and Aadhaar cards sho

Letters: Plugging the I-T loopholes

Apropos Anjani Kumarâ€™s article â€œZeroing in on the â€˜parallel economyâ€™â€ (February 6), while there is no dispute with the statistics, one has serious doubts about the writerâ€™s prescription for unearthing black money. How can one illegally acquire land, flats, houses and â€œother assetsâ€ that are clubbed in one bag? The Income Tax (I-T) Act has in place enough tools to gather information about such immovable assets, such as the mandatory reference from the registration authority when a property is registered. The problem is to make appropriate and timely use of such information. Therefore, such information, gathered in a routine manner, will have a very insignificant impact on tax revenue â€” not to mention the gross domestic product of the country.The assumption that by changing the basis of filing tax returns from â€œtotal incomeâ€ to â€œgross total incomeâ€ as defined in the I-T Act is neither here nor there. Assuming that the additional number of tax returns

Letters: Gross exaggerations

Finance Minister P Chidambaram has been exhorting government officials to control expenditure and if thereâ€™s one minister who is taking it to heart, it is Railway Minister Pawan Bansal. He makes sure all his personal correspondence is copied on the fair side of used paper, switches off his office lights himself when he exits rather than leaving it to a staffer and is said to be the first to turn off a dripping tap. Given that Bansal also did a stint in the finance ministry as minister of state, he probably has a better understanding of the need to control costs than almost anybody outside North Block.

Bansal's saving habit

While Modi was waxing eloquent in Delhi on the importance of development, the unpredictable West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was advising the trade union leaders of Kolkataâ€™s zoo to treat the animals there as part of their extended family. â€œIf the animals are happy, then the people in the city will also be happy,â€ she told nonplussed labour representatives. That just might make her an unintentional poster girl for animal rights activists, but her statement must have had trade union members worried. The animals at the Alipore Zoo live in the most appalling conditions, so their keepers might wonder whether Banerjee is suggesting the same treatment for them.

Mamata's zoo story

Development is everything, Gujarat Chief Minister and prime ministerial aspirant Narendra Modi told a rapt audience at the Shri Ram College of Commerce last week and, he predicted, Indiaâ€™s youth will make the country a world power. They have, Modi suggested, also changed Indiaâ€™s image â€” as â€œmouse charmersâ€. â€œEarlier the world saw us as the land of snake charmers,â€ he said, â€œâ€¦We are the land of mouse charmers now â€” with the click of a mouse, our youth have drawn the worldâ€™s attention to India.â€

Modi & the mouse charmers

It is easier to convert online ticket buyers into online shoppers, says a Google report. Not only are online ticket buyers likely to spend more, but are also comfortable with using credit and debit cards online (Click on graphic)

Travel, a gateway for e-commerce

As the country's third national-level stock exchange, MCX-SX, goes live on Monday, a look at its competitions â€“ BSE and NSE (Click on graphic)

New kid on the block

India's rice exports are likely to fall about a quarter this year, amid one-off cost spikes and rivals such as Vietnam, Pakistan and Myanmar selling at a discount of $35-50 a tonne, according to traders (Click on graphic)

India's rice exports set to decline

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) would pay Â£390 million to US and British authorities to settle allegations it manipulated benchmark interest rates. To avoid a public backlash, the British bank said it was cutting bonuses to help pay the fine. A look at some of the scandals that have engulfed banks in Britain

Are British banks bankable?

Apple struggles to deal with price-sensitive markets

Pricing dilemma

Former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje might have been made the state president of the Bharatiya Janata Party but her past experiences have made her realise that the state unit is riddled with differences. To unite the state leaders, Raje has coined a new slogan before the Assembly elections â€” â€œEk Jut Bhajpa, Congress Lapataâ€.

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