The pampered and the rest.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented Budget 2024 in Parliament yesterday and "laid out nine priority areas with an eye on the future. Additionally, the document stressed on the need to focus on the garib (poor), mahilaye (women), yuva (youth) and annadata (farmers)." ET. The Standard Deduction, which is available only to salaried employees, has been increased and the levels of income, at which higher tax rates kick in, have also been increased. cleartax.in. This will mainly help the pampered central government employees whose Dearness Allowance has been hiked to 50% and 13 other allowances have risen to 25%. ET. The consequence is an enormous tragedy of wasted money, time and precious years of young lives in a futile and frustrating effort to get into 'the gravy train' (vocabulary.com). "Sunil Kumar, a 30-year-old has spent the last 9 years of his life chasing a job in the Indian government." Along with scores of others, Kumar "has spent years cramming for a variety of tests, including the prestigious civil services exam needed to get a job as a federal government bureaucrat. He has also tried for a provincial civil services post and two other tests for lower level government positions." "According to government figures, 220 million people applied for federal jobs between 2014-2022, of whom 722,000 were selected." Reuters. Long term capital gains (LTCG) will rise from 10% to 12.5% and short term capital gains (STCG) will rise to 20% from 15% with immediate effect. From 1 October, the Securities Transaction Tax (STT) on options will rise from 0.062% to 0.10% and on futures will rise from 0.0125% to 0.02%. BS. This is, apparently, being done to curb speculative trading, mainly by young people, as chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) Madhabi Puri Buch "expressed concern that household savings are now going into speculative bets and added that the youth of the country is losing "tonnes of money' in these trades." ET. The youth of the country are just trying to recover the "tonnes of money" they wasted in gambling on tests for government jobs. Higher taxes on capital gains will apply to mutual funds as well but fund managers feel that the changes are negative only for short term investors and will push more people towards long-term investments. Reuters. Why that should be so when the LTCG tax has also been increased by 2.5% is a mystery. Mutual funds launch more new schemes when markets are already very high. In 2007-08, mutual funds launched 55 new schemes, collecting Rs 430.28 billion, when the BSE Sensex rose by 60% between March 2007 and January 2008. Investors lost money when markets crashed in 2008. "In June 2024, AMCs (asset management companies) launched 11 new schemes, raising Rs 143.70 billion," wrote Vivek Kaul. Will history repeat itself? Most likely. People are losers. Politicians and civil servants on the other hand....