Read the above article in text format below: Housing societies’ gatherings in the 1980s often featured food stalls and light gambling games. One popular game was ‘Lucky 7’, played with two dice. Players bet on […]
Retail investors vs algorithms: Like lambs to slaughter Read More »
Employees earning Rs. 15,000 pm pay “tax” @42% (the same rate as those earning more than Rs. 5 crores do). Finance minister late Arun Jaitley in his budget speech for 2015 mentioned “the situation with regard to the dormant EPF accounts and the claim ratios of ESIs is too well known to be repeated here. It has been remarked that both EPF and ESI have hostages, rather than clients. Further, the low paid worker suffers deductions greater than the better paid workers, in percentage terms.” He went on to advocate the solutions listed here. These solutions though promised a decade ago in a budget speech on the floor of the parliament have been stonewalled by the powerful EPFO and ESI establishments. Bureaucrats can justify anything as exemplified by the fictional UK bureaucrat Sir Humphrey in the BBC series “Yes Minister”. Watch how he justifies continuing a hospital with no patients but with 500 administrative staff https://shorturl.at/pdau2 . Don’t let the Sir Humphreys win this battle.
Read the above article in text format below: In the early 2000s, it was widely anticipated that the government would reduce the excise duty on cars in the upcoming Budget. As a result, demand for
Meera, a high flying corporate executive, was bent on using the money earned from her ESOPs to buy a second house as an investment which could be passed on to her children later. Her spouse Karan was against it as it would mean postponing their retirement plan. Harsh’s article in Business Standard on how Karan and Harsh managed to convince Meera to invest the money into financial assets instead. “You do not buy a cow today just because you may need milk years later. You make sure you have the money to buy the cow should you require it later” was one of the arguments that helped to convince Meera.
Investing for children: Buy house or opt for MFs? Read More »
Harsh just spent an idyllic week trekking through south west france. His tour organiser could put this together so well because the basic infrastructure already exists. Things like complete Geo marking of every square meter, availability of licensed hotels and taxi services who actually follow the licensing conditions & general cleanliness allowed them to build and deliver excellent packages on top. His article in the Business Standard drawing an analogy to an investors journey where the lack of a basic infrastructure like a centralized KYC has meant that 20 crore indians are involved with crypto/online gaming platforms with real money, but only half as many have demat accounts, and less than a quarter invest in MF.
Lack of central KYC hinders market participation Read More »
There is more to retirement planning than ensuring enough monetary corpus to last out a long retired life (almost as long as the working career itself). Unfortunately, even corporate executives nearing retirement, do not think about retirement at all and the few who do, concentrate on the monetary resources required for retired life. As the example of my friend Yogesh shows even a well planned retirement plan can have it’s twists and turns but is better than none at all. Harsh’s article in the business standard. Your comments and suggestions are welcome as always.
Most people reading this article would have experienced the bank’s “relationship manager” trying to (mis)sell a life insurance policy to them. Harsh’s article in Business Standard on the economics that push the bank to cannibalise on their own deposits and convert them into Life Insurance premiums. Comments/ disagreements welcome.
5 minute read – When can you consider a Home Loan or a Car Loan as a “good” loan” and how can you avoid getting taken for a ride while taking a loan by following 3 simple rules – read Harsh’s full article https://bit.ly/49Oq9ZM . For those who prefer watching a video – here is a link to a 20 minute video on the same content – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-tzdVNrwOo
Indian securities market regulator SEBI has recently sought public comments on a consultation paper that seeks to comprehensively revamp the entire process of transferring assets to the nominees on the death of the investor. It seeks to remove hurdles and standardise the process so that the transfer to nominees can happen in a few weeks (the dream is the transfer happening in a few days of applying and God willing even that will happen eventually as the system stabilises). The paper also deals with providing access to the investor themselves in case of their incapacitation (unfortunately many such cases are coming up as longevity of Indians increase due to advances in medical science) . This is a giant step towards making Investments in Indian securities market convenient and easy and will aid in spurring the ongoing process of financialisation of household investment assets.
Simplifying nominations can boost financialisation Read More »
Centralised data collection by the Income Tax Department (ITD) has widened the tax base & led to higher tax compliance. Tax payers also benefit as more than 90%+ have their returns (and refunds) accepted within weeks instead of years earlier. The National Faceless assessment scheme (NaFAC) and the National Faceless Apellate Scheme (NFAC) were rung in by the ITD with lofty aims of simplifying the tax administration for those assessee’s whose returns were selected for detailed scrutiny (which remains a large number). Harsh’s article in the Business Standard on how a combination of stiff tax collection targets, overbearing and antioquated attitudes of the ITD officials and a complete lack of accountability had given a bad name to NaFAC and NFAC which otherwise might have taken their place among the host of population scale technologies such as Aadhar, UPI, Account Aggregator and ONDC that have been introduced by India in recent times.
