Are you game for an early retirement?

Gone are the days on which people want to work till sixty for maintaining their earnings, promotions and stuff. Nowadays, may be due to high pressure jobs and stressful lives, people want to retire from their career and lead a peaceful life as early as possible.

This article from Economic Times would make some of you think of retiring early and plan your strategies accordingly. Now, what could be the first step for early retirement?

According to the article,

We spoke to financial experts, and also a few smart people who actually managed to retire early from their active careers, and asked them for tips on how to retire early. Everyone was unanimous about the first step - make sure retirement stays at the top of your priority list.

Well, which I feel is not incorrect; but how many of us have retirement planning as our top priority?

Outsourcing of transaction tax compliance

Over the years companies have found outsourcing of important business processes such as recruitment, payroll, finance, training, HR etc. as a strategic and effective alternative that saves time, money and resources. Outsourcing of taxation related processes in companies to third party vendors is the next big thing happening in the outsourcing arena.

Transaction tax compliance is a burdensome process for companies. To give you an example, in the United States alone, there are more than 13,000 tax jurisdictions and each year the tax laws change more than 1,000 times. This makes it extremely difficult for companies to track tax rates and manage tax payments to the government for various transactions done at various jursidictions having different tax laws. Thus, while making sales in a particular geography, a company (that is operating over multiple geographies) should know about the prevailing sales tax, use tax and tax laws of that geography so as to account it in the tax amount to be paid to the government.

Failing this (or variations happening in tax payments due to not accurately tracking sales tax and use tax rates), companies have to face penalties, audits and other legalities from the tax authorities. This shows how important it is to ensure transaction tax compliance by a company, eventhough the process is unwieldy. That's where taxation compliance outsourcing becomes important.

A good example of a firm that do outsourced transaction tax compliance is Sabrix, with it's Managed Tax Service (MTS) that offers tax compliance solutions to small business and mid-market companies (they also have a demo of the application at http://www.sabrix.com/smb/demo/).

Outsourcing tax compliance to firms like Sabrix has lot of advantages. It would eliminate the hassles (tracking tax rates of various geographies etc.) associated with tax compliance. The payments to tax authorities will be accurate and timely due to the expertise of the firm as it is dealing only with such things (core competency). Above all, there is a cost advantage to it. As a result companies can concentrate more on its core business. Few more reasons to outsource transaction tax compliance can be found here.

Increase in debt waiver for farmers

The government has hiked debt waiver for farmers to Rs. 71,680 Crore (1 Crore = 10 million).

As reported by rediff,

Under the modified scheme, all farmers, including big ones, in 237 identified districts will get a debt relief of 25 per cent of the outstanding amount or Rs 20,000, whichever is higher, Finance Minister P Chidambaram told reporters after a meeting of the Cabinet, which approved the guidelines.

In a time when farmer suicides are rampant, this move from the government would be a great relief for farmers who are in debt and whose hopes have come to an end.

Elderly Travel Insurance

Travel insurance is used to cover medical expenses, financial and other losses (due to theft, delayed departure etc.) incurred while one is traveling. Travel insurance is available for students, businessmen, tourists, adventurers and for that matter, even ordinary domestic and international travelers. While it is widely used in developed countries such as USA, UK etc., it’s becoming increasingly popular in countries like India.

Like any other insurance products, travel insurance products also are unfriendly to the senior citizens as most of the policies would either have strict age limits or higher premiums for the elderly. This comes as an irony when we have retirement plans, low cost airlines and holiday packages that enable more and more people to save and travel during old age.

Recently, I came across a site called Covermytravels that offers travel insurance for senior citizens at a very lower cost compared to other insurers. Elderly Travel Insurance gives travel insurance quotes with in seconds (which is completely online) and is very user friendly. They have single trip per year and multi trip per year policies and also have some optional benefits such as ‘Winter Sports Cover’ that could be added to the travel insurance. They also give assistance to customers over telephone who want clarifications before deciding on the travel insurance they require.

Overall, an outstanding option senior traveler could bang on and I hope sites like this would be a great relief for elder travelers.

Sub-prime woes haunting the US

While the US bleeds of sub-prime wounds, most of the mortgages taken through sub-prime borrowing are now facing foreclosure. People who have taken such loans to build/buy houses are vacating it subsequent to court verdicts.

The gravity of the situation comes out clearly in this news reported by the New York Times. Quoting them,

The problem of vacant homes is all the more striking when considered against predictions by economists that a couple of million more homes will enter foreclosure in the next two years, said Cheryl Lang, president of Integrated Mortgage Solutions, a company based in Houston that contracts with Mr. McCallister and Mr. Law on behalf of mortgage companies.

With the consequent economic decline leading to more and more layoffs/job cuts, I guess the situation in the US is going to spiral out in the days to come. Feel like the sub-prime crisis had much more in its store than expected!