-The Hindu The answer lies in the fragile state of the Centre’s finances, and its control over interest, pension and subsidy expenses To any layman watching India’s annual Budget jamboree, the entire exercise must seem very puzzling. After the Finance Minister has read out a long list of giveaways to farmers, small businesses, low-income earners and senior citizens in his speech, none of the beneficiaries seems entirely happy with their gifts. Commentators, after...

-TheWire.in The Modi government’s attempts to reshape the economy lie entirely in the financial realm; they come on the back of concerted efforts to strip workers of legal protection in not just the informal sector, but also the formal. The Narendra Modi government has made two major interventions in the economic sphere, demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST), with the ostensible aim of expanding the formal sector at the expense...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: The Income-tax Act is intricate — sometimes income received by an individual even if it relates to employment, does not fit within the technical definitions of 'salary' or 'profits received in lieu of salary'. Thus, very often, such income could not be taxed. Budget 2018-19 proposes to change this scenario. A wide range of income received — say non-compete payments (which sometimes did not fit the above...

-The Hindu Business Line They milk tax breaks in ways that smaller firms can’t, paying only 23.9% tax on average New Delhi: India’s most profitable companies paid 23.9 per cent tax on an average on their profits for financial year 2016-17, about 10.7 percentage points lower than the statutory rate of 34.6 per cent, helped by a wide range of concessions and incentives, the latest Budget documents show. These companies, 335 in all,...

-The Indian Express Únion Budget 2018: Budget addresses the crises in agriculture. The devil is in the allocations All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. In Anna Karenina, only if a person is satisfied on all counts will she be happy. The allocations in the budget cover every sector, with umpteen implications, and no person’s expectations can be fulfilled on all counts. While every...