Mutually Beneficial Come March and the middle-class, salaried Indian turns edgy. With the deadline nearing, he’s busy doing the rounds of the red-brick building housing the Income-Tax department, racking his brains to figure out the right mix for his investments that will keep the tax hounds at bay. Less than one per cent of these assessees are scrutinised later but that’s another story. For those who want to play by the rulebook and legally beat the taxman, there are several schemes floated by financial institutions which ensure hefty rebates while maximising returns. Pre-liberalisation, the only sureshot method to escape the tax net was to evade it. But glasnost gales have swept all that out of the Indian economy replacing the draconian raid raj with the more polite ‘surveys’. Reforms have given a fresh lease of life to the economy which was in dire need of cash inflows. Financial institutions have risen to the occasion and devised numerous instruments to attract individual tax payers and the body corporate. The Voluntary...
