I normally don’t have a view on the budget. Neither do I have a view on the 2020 budget. However, I wish to rubbish it a bit.

The deficit number of 3.5 or 3.8 is a joke. To seriously know this number you should know the deficit of the states, municipalities, etc. Since I do not trust the figure I am not going to tell you whether it is 3.5 or 5.3 or 5.5….it hardly matters.

For most of my friends, myself and my family taxation of dividends will not change much. It was at 24%..it will now likely to be at 25% or will it be 30%..nothing really changes. Will companies shift from paying dividends to buy backs? Mnc like Colgate, Nestle, and big div payers like Castrol, Psu, etc. will surely benefit. Will Wipro, and TCS resort to buy backs instead of paying more dividends? I have not seen the details of the budget…so can’t comment.

Arun Jaitely used to ask for a Rs. 10L tax exemption when he was in the opposition. Now he is dead and gone…and we will take another 3 years to reach there. Or is it 2 years to reach there? It is high time that the taxable income is indexed to inflation. Why does the adjusting for inflation look like a great favor on the downtrodden?

Do not see anything new – but I did not expect anything from this govt. I am happy that Estate duty has not been levied…

Budget reaction by Mr. Raghvendra Nath, MD, Ladderup Wealth Management.

The Budget speech turned out to be no different from the previous years. The longest speech ever, the finance minister spent majority of the time describing the achievements of the government in the past and refused to acknowledge even once that the Indian Economy is facing a serious slowdown. There was widespread expectations that the budget would reduce personal Income tax in order to boost consumption. However, while the minister tinkered with the slab rates, she also qualified the reduction by removing all tax exemptions. To complicate further, now the individual can choose to pay taxes based on ‘Old rates with exemptions’ or ‘new rates without exemptions’. The outcome is that except gimmickry and confusion, the new changes are hardly going to move the needle of consumption. The only large and surprising measure in the budget was the partial disinvestment of LIC, the crown jewel of the government. This can lead to substantial money to the government and may also facilitate more transparency in one of the most opaque financial institutions of the country. Another significant measure is 100% tax exemption for sovereign wealth funds on their infrastructure investments. This should help in bringing more FDI in the long term in the infrastructure space. The new Direct Taxes complicate the situation more than they resolved and `would contribute a little surplus in the hands of the people. The DDT would provide additional relief to corporates but would be negative for the individuals as they would be subjected to nominal tax rate as applicable. So basically any hope that the budget would have in assisting the economic revival has been dashed out temporarily.