My Favourite Tax-Saving Investment

A quick disclaimer to begin. My favourite tax-saving investment does not have to be your favourite tax-saving investment and we can always agree to disagree. We discussed “Things to consider before investing in a tax-saving product” in an earlier post. The post is a good primer on how to think about your tax-saving choices. My… Continue Reading

Are You Planning to Make a Tax-Saving Investment?

The tax-saving season is round the corner. Are you still running around to finalize tax-saving investments? Well, there are so many ways to save tax. There is PPF, EPF, NPS, ELSS, LIC policies, ULIPs, 5-year FDs, life and health insurance plans, pension plans and many more. In this post, I do not intend to discuss… Continue Reading

Budget 2021 Highlights

The Finance Minister presented the Union Budget 2021 on February 1, 2021. Here are the key highlights. Tax Slabs Remain Unchanged No changes have been made to the existing income tax slabs. Interest on EPF Becomes Taxable If you contribute more than Rs 2.5 lacs to your EPF account every year, the interest earned on… Continue Reading

Budget 2020 Highlights

The Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, presented the Union Budget 2020 in the parliament yesterday. In this post, let’s look at the highlights of the Budget proposal. We will look at the proposals from personal taxation perspective only. #1 Restructuring of Income Tax Slabs, Lowering of Personal Tax Rates and a Choice There is a major… Continue Reading

You Can Use Your EPF Corpus to Pay Your Home Loan EMI

Ministry of Finance and EPFO have been on overdrive to ease partial withdrawal rules from EPF.  With “Housing for All by 2022” in mind, there has been significant relaxation in EPF partial withdrawal rules if you want to withdraw to acquire a house. No Need for Multiple Claim Forms In a press release dated February… Continue Reading

10 Retirement Planning Tips

Planning for retirement is one of the most important financial goals for anyone. During your working years, you need to ensure that your lifestyle does not suffer during your retirement. Here are a few tips that you can use while planning for your retirement. 1. Set a CORRECT retirement corpus target. It is not easy to… Continue Reading

Financial Planning for Self-Employed

Being self-employed gives you the freedom to work on what you want and how you want. You don’t have to deal with a rude boss and frustrating office politics. You may get to choose your work timings. Till now, everything sounds good. However, self-employment can bring its own set of unique problems. There is no… Continue Reading

Budget 2016 — Salient Points

The latest Union Budget is a mixed bag for many investors. Though the budget had many sops for the borrowers & middle class folks, there were a few setbacks too. Let’s look at ten most important takeaways from the latest budget. 1. Tax Relief for First Time Home Buyers First time home buyers have been… Continue Reading