How much does the Budget give in your wallet?

LESS TAXING: A panel of experts demystifies what Budget 2008 means to your wallet and your money.

      

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Keywords: Incomes Tax Slabs, Personal Finance

Another key announcement that the Finance Minister has made in the Budget is that if you buy a bond in a D-mate form, you pay no TDS on it. The FM also talked about creating a national market, something which the industry has been talking about for a long time. Now, when an investor invests in a liquid fund or debt fund, how does this move benefit an investor?

Milind Barve: The debt market issue is something that is being discussed for a long time. There has been an RS Patil Committee report which is very comprehensive on this issue and which has created the roadmap for reform in the debt market. What the FM intends to do is get a national platform ready. The key is to get a debt market which is deep and liquid and which overtime allows even retail participation.

I am not sure whether the retain participation is going to get triggered at this stage. But it's important for all the participants in the debt market — whether it's mutual funds, insurance companies or commercial banks — to have a national platform, which will allow us to get a better price discovery and a little more depth and liquidity in the market.

The TDS issue was a bit an irritant, which has probably been taken care of now. I do believe that people will not buy a corporate bond because there is no TDS. Because a lot of the investing entities are not taxable at all. But those who are taxable and who had bought bonds and would have had to take an I-T refund would now be saved of that trouble.

As far as the individual investor is concerned, on a scale of 10, how do the experts rate the Budget?

For Lakhotia it's 7 while both Shikha Sharma and Milind Barve give it a high score of 9.