Morarji Desai holds the record for presenting the highest number of budgets - 10. of these 8 were annual ones and 2 were interim ones. He also had the honour of presenting the budgets in 1964 and 1968 on 29^th February, which happened to be his birthday. He had 2 stints, one as a finance minister and another as a deputy minister.

The increased spending from the Government has increased the deficit in the Government budget to a very high level. At the GDP level it is a comfortable slightly over 4%. But on an actual budget level, the deficit is at over 40% of the income (14 lakh crores expenses on an income of 10 lakh crores). This is something to be worried about and worked on. A country cannot sustain itself at such high deficit levels for long.

Do you benefit from reduced mortality charges if you buy a life insurance at a young age? The answer is yes based on the simple logic that higher the age higher is the mortality charges. For example, a 25 year old will obviously have a higher life expectancy than a 55 year old and hence will get lower mortality charges if he buys a life insurance.

On handing over the house to you, the builder needs to also give a `Completion Certificate’. This is issued by municipal authorities which establishes that the building complies with the approved plan. You would need this certificate for registration of your house and other government formalities.

The 40% scheme allows for purchase of equity, preference shares and convertible debentures not exceeding 51% of the face value of each issue. Repatriation of up to 40% of the new issue is allowed. Under this scheme, NRIs can invest in new projects or in expansion and diversification projects of existing companies.

Tax treatment is where the PPF scores very high. The PPF comes under the Exempt- Exempt- Exempt category. This means that the amount invested gets tax benefits, the interest is not taxed and so is the final maturity amount. The investment gets benefits under Section 80C of the IT Act. The investment however is limited to a maximum of Rs.70,000/- per year per person. This limit of Rs.70,000/- includes the deposits made in the name of any dependent children.

If you file your returns after the last date, you will be charged a penal interest at the rate of 1% per month of delay. However, if such a return is filed after March 31, 2010, apart from the penal interest, you will also be liable for a penalty of Rs 5,000. Remember that having tax deducted at source if you are employed is only half the journey. You need to file your returns to complete the process. The point is to avoid hassles for you and your tax professional, so prepare to file your returns as early as possible instead of waiting for the due date to arrive.

Simply put, tax evasion occurs when any trust, individual, or firm, seeks to avoid paying taxes by illegal and unfair means, by, for example, deliberately hiding income from the tax authorities to reduce the liability of tax. People have been known to submit dishonest reports, including declaring less gains, profits, or income than what was actually earned. Other means of evading tax are smuggling, and avoiding paying out customs duty, value added tax, and income tax.

Investing directly in art has its own drawbacks. For one, these artworks need to be protected against theft and damage. Second, you need to have large sums of money to buy these works. Third, they occupy a lot of space. So for those looking to invest in art but have money and space constraints, there are art funds available, where you can pool your money along with other investors and invest in art. Some reputed art funds operating in India are Osian’s Yatra and Indian Fine Art Fund.

Real estate attracts capital gains tax. The advantage is that we can use indexation benefits to our advantage. The indexation index is announced every year by the Income tax department. This is a number which links the inflation to property values. By using indexation, we can estimate the true appreciation of the real estate after adjusting for inflation.

Unlike the manual clearing of cheques where there is a possibility of many human errors and subsequent delay in clearing, the MICR code on the cheque printed with a unique magnetic ink usually iron oxide has magnetic material present in it and thus makes it machine-readable and almost error proof! Under this method the reading machine or a cheque sorting machine reads through a cheque when inserted and identifies the branch the cheque belongs to and activates the automation clearing process.

A lot of investor participation goes into opting for the strategy to protect from market bubbles! An investor is better positioned when he possesses a strong financial knowledge, has more time to watch market movements and above all a basic understanding of the assets markets. The investors’ ability to make use of the various financial tools, online and offline will also help while opting for the right strategy.

This type of loan repayment option is perhaps a bit different from a step-up loan! A balloon repayment takes its name and repayment structure from the shape of a balloon that swells at the top. Just like a step-up loan, a borrower choosing the balloon loan repayment option would pay lower EMIs in the beginning years of the loan tenure. However, the similarity ends there. As we move into the loan tenure the borrower would be required to pay more than one-third of the loan amount during the last instalments.

Allahabad Bank intends to carry on with its present positive growth trend and obtain a business objective of Rs two lakh crore by the end of 2010. At the close of 3^rd quarter, the bank had recorded a business of Rs 1.60 lakh crore and is geared to fulfill the Rs 1.75 lakh goal established for the 2009-10 financial year. This was stated by J.P. Dua, Allahabad Bank chairman and managing director.

Manufacturers focusing primarily on selling diesel cars such as Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Motors, Toyota, Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen foresee a big fall in sales should the government accept the suggestion by Parikh committee to levy a flat tax of Rs 80,000 on diesel cars, due to increasing price differential with petrol models.

India’s banking regulator, RBI does not possess any details regarding the stiff fines and steep interest rates charged by banks on credit card defaults. When asked if RBI is aware of the fact that the banks are levying stiff fines along with heavy interest rate on credit card defaults and the statements are not sent purposely in order to earn unusual interest rates and fines on defaults, the bank said it was not in the know about these facts.

Economic growth figures for the present financial year that will be released around May will give the actual scenario to the government to take the decision whether they can roll back the package. This was stated by Pronab Sen, the chief statistician.

Honda Motor, Japan’s 2^nd main car maker reported nearly 7 fold increase in profit in the final quarter from the previous year. This was due to higher sales in India and China.

On Thursday, ICICI Bank said that it foresees the interest rates to go up from the 2^ndquarter of the forthcoming financial year, since investment activities will go up from then on.

On Thursday, the government said that it might take a decision on the Parikh Panel suggestions of liberalizing the oil rates and hiking the prices of kerosene and cooking fuel prior to budget.