Wed 16 May, 2012, 4:42 PM IST - India Markets closed

  • Have you been hassled by credit card bills even after you have had a "full and final settlement"? Did a bank give you a bill for a credit card you don't even have, and then deducted the amount due from your bank account before asking you? Have they changed your interest rate without informing you in advance, or giving you an opportunity to refinance elsewhere?

    You can complain, without having to go to court. You must, of course, complain to the bank first, and only if the bank is unable to resolve your issue within 30 days — or take a decision that you think violates banking rules — you can go to a higher authority, the Banking Ombudsman.

    The Banking Ombudsman (BO) web site allows you to directly lodge a complaint online. (Sadly only 13% were given online, and 14% by email last year — 73% of applications still came by the old method of letter or post-card) You will need to go through the documentation to find out exactly what section your complaint applies in, but the process is well

    Read More »
  • As the time closes in for the Budget in mid-March, the question on the mind of everyone is: will we get a lower tax rate? For most of the people watching, the budget doesn't begin until the finance minister says "tax slabs" and ends immediately thereafter. But the underlying assumption for lowering direct taxes is that a lower tax rate will result in greater compliance with more taxpayers coming forth to pay; the overall result being that tax collections increase.

    While this has happened in general, the tax collections have been very low this year, despite large slab changes in the last budget. The total tax receipts have gone up only 7% till December, making it a pretty bad year — only 2008 and 2009 were worse. It is thus likely that the government starts to take a hard look at where they must cut down the deficit, and they provide an estimate of "Revenue Foregone" under various proposals.

    Let's take a look at the "losses" that the government faces through lower taxes or tariffs on

    Read More »
  • The three reasons people buy insurance is:

    a) To save tax.

    b) As an investment, to make a good return on their money.

    c) To feel good that one has some insurance or to get rid of that pesky uncle who keeps mentioning it.

    The fourth — and perhaps most important — reason to buy insurance is to let your family be financially secure if you die. This is the only reason anything should be insured. Car insurance gives you money if your car has an accident, and covers costs for people you might injure. Home Fire insurance covers the damages in case there's a fire. You pay every year, and you're happy to not have to claim (because it means you've not had an accident or a fire!); and at the end, you don't get your money back.

    Not so with Life insurance. The most policies bought are for the purpose of saving or investing, not for insurance. And that, further, is because Life Insurance is hardly ever bought, it's sold. The sellers get a fatter commission when they sell you a "saving" product, so

    Read More »
  • In 1973, the Kreditbanken (bank) at Norrmalmstorg in Stockholm was attacked by robbers, who held bank employees hostage for five days. After the drama, it was evident that the hostages sympathized with their captors, even though they were held against their will. The situation is now considered an academic study — the Stockholm Syndrome — where people get emotionally attached to people who obviously try to do them harm.

    More apparent, perhaps was the case of Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was held for 18 long years — from 1991 to 2009 — but got so emotionally attached to her abductor that she even helped him in his business and met customers. Being an unwilling hostage, or in other cases, just being in an unwelcome situation with no way out, makes us rationalize in favour of our position.

    Less dramatically, we become hostage to our own opinion. We simply can't let go of what we believe is "normal", even in the face of facts. If your blood tests show you have a high cholesterol level, your

    Read More »
  • While we are battered with news about abandoned babies, victories and then losses for telecom firms, elections in UP and surging stock markets, it's useful to note the quietly released data on the fiscal deficit that are seriously alarming.

    The Comptroller General of Accounts (CGA) has reported that the government revenue, from April to December 2011, is 15% lower than the same period last year. Meanwhile, total expenditure is up 14%. Higher spending and lower revenue point to a fiscal deficit that is more than double last year's figures, till December.

    Indian Central government

    Advance Taxes Are Not Enough

    December, was when corporates (and individuals) pay another chunk of advance tax. This should have bolstered government revenues, but it seemingly has not. Total tax revenue in December, net of what was paid to the states, was Rs 99,944 crores, just 5.3% above the previous year. For the April to December time period, tax collections are just 7.5% higher.

    Consider that India's Gross Domestic Product has

    Read More »

Pagination

(25 Stories)

Editors' Picks

Follow Yahoo! Finance India

Deepak Shenoy has built technology companies and now trades and writes about the Indian financial markets. He has built and deployed algorithmic trading systems and continues to work with back-testing, refining and enhancing trading through technology. He blogs at [link: http://capitalmind.in]Capital Mind and runs [link: http://marketvision.in]MarketVision, a financial knowledge company.

Subscribe and RSS

[X]

How to subscribe

Roll over each section to subscribe using Add to My Yahoo! or RSS Feed feeds.

Yahoo! News offers dozens of RSS feeds you can read in My Yahoo! or using third-party RSS news reader software. Click here to find out more about RSS and how you can use it with Yahoo! News.

QUOTES

 
Recent Quotes
Symbol Price Change % Chg 
19,259.83 -634.48 -3.19%
^HSI
Your most recently viewed tickers will automatically show up here if you type a ticker in the "Enter symbol/company" at the bottom of this module.
You need to enable your browser cookies to view your most recent quotes.
 
Sign-in to view quotes in your portfolios.