Income Tax Slabs for Financial Year 2012-13

Here’s the Income Tax Slabs for the financial year 2012-13, based on the budget presented by the Finance Minister on 16th March 2012.

General
Till 2,00,000 – 0%
2,00,001 ~ 5,00,000 – 10%
5,00,001 ~ 10,00,000 – 20%
Above 10,00,000 – 30%

Senior Citizen (Between 60 & 80 years)
Till 2,50,000 – 0%
2,50,001 ~ 5,00,000 – 10%
5,00,001 ~ 10,00,000 – 20%
Above 10,00,000 – 30%

Very Senior Citizen (Above 80 years)
Till 5,00,000 – 0%
5,00,001 ~ 10,00,000 – 20%
Above 10,00,000 – 30%

Comments
The Finance Minister didn’t mention about a separate tax slab for women. Either it is awaited or we will see that it is unified with the General category. I think the unification of tax slabs for men and women makes greater sense.

The first slab is raised from 1,80,000 to 2,00,000 leading to a maximum tax savings of 2,000 in this slab. People earning income between 8,00,000 and 10,00,000 are the biggest beneficiaries of the new tax slabs as this range of income moves from a 30% slab to 20% slab, resulting in a maximum tax savings of 20,000.

Overall, this is not a great relaxation for the income earning populace at a time when the cost of living has consistently been higher and is not showing any signs of cooling.

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Inflation rates of India (2012)

This post tracks inflation rates of India for the year 2012. To have a look at previous inflation rates, please read,
- Inflation rates of India (2010)
- Inflation rates of India (2009)
- Inflation rates of India (2008)

Before that, a few facts about inflation rate calculation in India.
- Inflation in India is based on Wholesale Price Index
- A set of 435 commodities are used for the WPI based inflation calculation
- The base year for WPI calculation is 1993-94
- WPI is available at the end of every month, for a period of 1 year ended that month

Latest Inflation Rate
- 2012 Feb - 6.95% (via)
(for 12 months ended on the given month)

Previous Inflation Rates (for 12 months ended on given month)
- 2012 Feb - 6.95% (via)
- 2012 Jan - 6.55% (via)

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- Inflation rates of India (2010)
- Inflation rates of India (2009)
- Inflation rates of India (2008)
- How is WPI inflation rate calculated in India?
- Commodities and their weight-ages in WPI calculation of India
- Base year and number of commodities used for inflation calculation in India
- The magic of Inflation

Gold Reserves and Demand

As per World Gold Council statistics, the world official gold holdings as of September 2010 stands as follows.

#	Country	Gold Reserves (Tonnes)
1	USA	8,133.5
2	Germany	3,402.5
3	Italy	2,451.8
4	France	2,435.4
5	China	1,054.1
6	Switzerland	1,040.1
7	Japan	765.2
8	Russia	726.0
9	Netherlands	612.5
10	India	557.7

Please click here to read the entire report on world official gold holdings as of September 2010, released by the World Gold Council.

Please note that the report shows only the gold reserves owned by the governments of these countries and doesn't include the demand for gold jewellery from the people of these countries.

When it comes to the demand for gold for jewellery, India still remains the largest jewellery market in the world, accounting for more than 25% of global gold jewellery demand, which is followed by China. To give an indicative figure for the demand for gold for jewellery, in Q2 2010,

Global gold jewellery demand: 408.7 tonnes
Gold jewellery demand in India: 123.0 tonnes
Gold jewellery demand in China: 75.4 tonnes

Seems the yellow metal's dream run will continue for a long time.

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What is ISIN?

ISIN or International Securities Identification Number is a 12 character alpha-numeric code that uniquely identifies a security, across the world. The securities include shares, bonds, warrants etc. For example, the ISIN of Bharti Airtel is INE397D01024.

ISIN constitutes of three parts. It starts with a two letter country code. In the case of Bharti Airtel the country code is IN (India). The country code is according to the ‘ISO 3166-1 alpha-2’ standard.

The country code is followed by a nine character alpha-numeric national security identification code assigned to a security by the governing bodies in each country. In the case of Bharti Airtel, the national security identification code is ‘E397D0102’. This is followed by a single character check digit, which will validate the ISIN code. The detail of how this validation is done is illustrated here.

In a time when security trading across countries has become rampant, having a unique identifier for a security greatly helps traders as well as brokers in various countries to unambiguously identify and trade a security.

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What went wrong with RBS?

A nice and indepth article that came in The Economist, which describes what went wrong with RBS.