| Tax Saver Fixed Deposits with High Interest Rates Posted: 19 Jan 2011 09:01 AM PST I updated my tax saver fixed deposits page today, and I thought I'd create a separate page to record some of the better paying interest rates on these tax saving FDs. With that in mind, here is a list with some of the best interest rates on fixed deposits that are covered under Section 80C that I could find. I'm sure there are some that I have missed, so if you know of any banks that pay well, please leave a comment or drop in an email, and I will update the list.
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| Number of income tax payers in India and US Posted: 18 Jan 2011 11:46 PM PST Business Standard has an article today about how salaried individuals may be spared from filing tax returns. It says that the Income Tax department is contemplating a proposal to make filing taxes exempt for salaried taxpayers who don't have any other source of income. So, a salaried individual will of course pay taxes, but won't have to go through the hassles of filing tax returns. The story goes on to say that banks and employers have the details of salaried people who don't have any other income, so in the future it might be possible to eliminate the need of having the individuals file tax returns, and get this information from other sources. This will obviously mean a lot less hassle for a lot of folks, and I hope this idea sees the light of day in our lifetime. What really caught my eye though was the number of people paying income tax in India. The story has this number at 35 million, which is about 3% of our population, and is quite low. Please note that this is not the total number of taxpayers because you pay indirect taxes on almost everything you use, so in that sense taxpayers will be quite high. Still, 3% is a very low number, and I thought I'd compare this with the number of people who pay personal income tax in the US. Here is how that chart looks like. In the US, about 45% of the population pays taxes, as the total population is about 307 million, and the number of returns filed for individual income tax is about 144 million. That's a huge difference between India and the US, and I'd think an indication of where India is headed in the years to come as more people join the organized labor force, and more electronic transactions bring in greater transparency.  |
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