Direct Tax Bill - Highlights

NEW DELHI: The Cabinet on Thursday approved the draft of the Direct Tax Code (DTC) Bill, but the changes in tax slabs proposed in the latest version are a pale shadow of the sweeping changes promised in the original proposal unveiled in August last year by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.

The version approved by the Cabinet exempts incomes up to Rs 2 lakh per annum (against the current Rs 1.6 lakh) from tax, proposes to tax incomes between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 5 lakh at 10%, between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh at 20% and beyond Rs 10 lakh at 30%.

For women and senior citizens, the exemption limit would be Rs 2.5 lakh per annum. At present, women have to pay tax on incomes of Rs 1.9 lakh per annum or more and senior citizens on incomes of Rs 2.4 lakh or more.

The maximum that anyone can gain from this proposal in terms of savings on the tax burden compared to the present levels is Rs 26,000 per annum. Even that is only possible if you are a woman and have an annual income of Rs 10 lakh or more. That's a far cry from the Rs 2.2 lakh that the same person would have saved if the original DTC proposal had been accepted by the Cabinet.

For corporates, too, the DTC appears to have flattered only to deceive. The code passed by the Cabinet has maintained the rate of tax on corporate incomes at the current 30%, against the 25% proposed originally, and the minimum alternate tax (MAT) for corporates at 20% of book profits.

The original draft had promised a whole new paradigm in direct taxation, drastically lowering the tax burden while also doing away with most exemptions. A revised draft released in June this year brought back some of the exemptions like the one available for interest on housing loans that the first draft had proposed to get rid of.

The speculation that this might force the finance ministry to make the revision of tax slabs also less ambitious to avoid giving away too much revenue has now proved well-founded. Under the original proposal, the 10% slab would have extended up to Rs 10 lakh and the 20% slab up to Rs 25 lakh, meaning that the 30% rate would have applied only to incomes of over Rs 25 lakh per annum.

What has finally emerged unless the rates or slabs are changed once again in the process of being discussed in the Parliamentary standing committee or in Parliament hardly justifies the hype that greeted the DTC when it was announced last year. It is the sort of tinkering at the margins that routinely happens in the annual Budget, instead of being the biggest tax revolution since Independence.

On the plus side for individual taxpayers, withdrawal from provident funds will not be taxed as the original DTC had proposed to do. Also deductions from taxable income will be available for interest on housing loans up to Rs 1.5 lakh per annum and on payments into PF and similar superannuation schemes up to Rs 1 lakh. Also available will be a deduction of up to Rs 50,000 for life insurance and health insurance premiums or tuition fees.

Source - Times of India

An Interesting Fact...

Why Newton Committed Suicide.....

Here is the reason. Why Newton Committed Suicide.....

Once, Newton came to India and watched a few Tamil movies that had his head
spinning. He was convinced that all his logic and laws in physics were just
a huge pile of junk and apologized for everything he had done.

In the movie of Rajanikanth, Newton was confused to such an extent that he
went paranoid. Here are a few scenes

1) Rajanikanth has a Brain Tumor which, according to the doctors can't be
cured and his death is imminent. In one of the fights, our great
Rajanikanth is shot in the head. To everybody's surprise, the bullet passes
through his ears taking away the tumor along with it and he is cured! Long
Live Rajanikanth!

2) In another movie, Rajanikanth is confronted with 3 gangsters.
Rajanikanth has a gun but unfortunately only one bullet and a knife.

Guess, what he does?

He throws the knife at the middle gangster? & shoots the bullet towards the
knife. The knife cuts the bullet into 2 pieces, which kills both the
gangsters on each side of the middle gangster & the knife kills the middle
one.

3) Rajanikanth is chased by a gangster. Rajanikanth has a revolver but no
bullets in it. Guess, what he does. Nah? not even in your remotest
imaginations.

He waits for the gangster to shoot. As soon as the gangster shoots,
Rajanikanth opens the bullet compartment of his revolver and catches the
bullet. Then, he closes the bullet compartment and fires his gun.
Bang... the gangster dies...

This was too much for our Newton to take! He was completely shaken and
decided to go back. But he happened to see another movie for one last time,
and thought that at least one movie would follow his theory of physics. The
whole movie goes fine and Newton is happy that all in the world hasn't
changed. Oops, not so fast!

The 'climax' finally arrives.
Rajanikanth gets to know that the villain is on the other side of a very
high wall. So high that Rajanikanth can't jump even if he tries like one of
those superman techniques that our heroes normally use.
Rajanikanth has to desperately kill the villain because it's the climax.
( Newton dada is smiling since it is virtually
impossible?)

Rajanikanth suddenly pulls two guns from his pockets.
He throws one
gun
in the air and when the gun has reached above the height of the wall, he
uses the second gun and shoots at the trigger of the first gun in air.
The first gun fires off and the villain is dead.

Newton commits suicide...

Long live Rajnikant

How To Make Your Own Greenhouse With 2-Litre Plastic Bottles

If you are a serious gardener, you have probably dreamed of having your own greenhouse. A greenhouse can be expensive unless you build it yourself. You may construct a homemade greenhouse in several different ways, but one of the most-economical methods is to build a greenhouse with plastic bottles. Plastic 2-liter bottles allow maximum sunlight and offer protective insulation. If the greenhouse gets damaged, repairs are easy to make by simply replacing the plastic bottles. If you can use scissors or a screwdriver, you can build this greenhouse.

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• 1,500 plastic 2-liter bottles
• Soap
• Water
• Scissors or razor knife
• Gravel
• Shovel
• Rake
• Level
• 4 boards, 4-by-4 inch by 8-foot long
• Cement
• Drill or screwdriver
• Screws
• Miter saw
• 9 boards, 2-by-2 inch by 8 foot long
• 20 boards, 2-by-2 inch by 6 foot long
• 2 hinges
• 8 boards, 2-by-2 inch by 5 foot long
• 2 boards, 2-by-2 inch by 4 foot long
• 140 to 150 canes, bamboo (or wooden rods), 6-foot long
• Staple gun
• Fence staples

1. 1

   Prepare the 2-liter plastic bottles by soaking off the labels in hot soapy water. Remove the caps. The label must be removed so they do not block sunlight. Wash, rinse and thoroughly dry the bottles. Cut the bottom off each bottle, using scissors or a razor knife.

2. 2

   Measure and mark the 6-by-8 foot dimensions for the greenhouse. Level the soil. Shovel gravel over the floor area and rake it level. Sink a 4-by-4 inch by 8-foot post 2 feet into the cement at each of the four corners of the greenhouse. Check with a level.

3. 3

   Build the side frames using four 2-by-2 inch by 8 foot boards and four 2-by-2 inch by 6-foot boards. Miter the ends of all lumber with a miter saw. Use screws and a drill or screwdriver to assemble the mitered end of the lumber. Build two side frames.

4. 4

   Build the back frame using four 2-by-2 inch by 6-foot boards. Miter the ends. Use screws and a drill or screwdriver to assemble the mitered end of the lumber.

5. 5

   Build the front frame and door frame using four 2-by-2 inch by 6-foot boards and six 2-by-2 inch by 6-foot boards. Duplicate the back frame. Build a door frame that will fit easily inside the front frame by measuring the inner edge of the frame for height. If the measurement is 6 feet, subtract 6 inches, and that is the height of your door frame. The width or the door can be up to 4 feet wide. Miter all ends and screw them together. Attach the door frame to the front frame on the left side, using hinges.

6. 6

   Build the sloped roof using four 2-by-2 inch by 8-foot boards and four 2-by-2 inch by 5-foot boards for the roof sides, one 2-by-2 inch by 8-foot lumber for the roof central beam, four 2-by-2 inch by 5-foot boards and two 2-by-2 inch by 6-foot boards for the roof top gables and two 2-by-2 inch by 4-foot boards for the roof supporting beam for gables. Miter the ends. Use screws and a drill or screwdriver to assemble the mitered end of the boards.

7. 7

   Make the plastic walls by inserting the cane through the first bottle, with the bottle neck pointing down, the rest of the bottles are bottle neck up. Fill the cane with bottles and lay it on the frame that is on the ground. Pack canes tightly on the frame until it is full. Staple the canes to the frame at the top and bottom. Fill the two side frames, front, back and door frames. The two roof panels should also be filled with bottles. Screw the completed frames to the corner posts. Fill the triangular gables with bottles but adjust the canes to fit the shape before installing the gables to the greenhouse with screws.

Tips & Warnings

• Make your own solar warmer for your new greenhouse. Paint several plastic milk jugs black and fill them with water. Place the black jugs on the side of the greenhouse that receives the most sun. The black bottle will absorb light and heat the water which will keep the greenhouse warm at night.
• Use extreme care when cutting the bottoms of the 2 liter bottles. Wear protective gloves to avoid blisters, cuts, and scratches.

10 Awesome Books : TOI

Who among us hasn’t struggled with a book or poem that failed to capture our attention? Here's a list of ten toughest reads in literature.


1. Finnegans Wake, James Joyce: Internet searches on “most difficult” and “hard to read” novels unfailingly recognize Finnegan’s Wake as the most difficult work of fiction in the English language. Written partially in a made-up language of mindbendingly convoluted puns, this novel is often considered unreadable.

2. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner: Some readers have found themselves filled with fury after trying to tackle the near-punctuation-less, paragraph-long, stream-of-onscious sentences.

3. Naked Lunch, William Burroughs: Is it any surprise that a book whose pages were written while the author was high on heroin, then cut into pieces, randomly reassembled, and published is a tough read? The book certainly is a difficult read, as sentences seem to just end without warning and new sentences begin half-way through.

4. The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot: This tremendously dense modernist poem is told in five parts and abruptly shifts between characters, time, place, and languages (English, Latin, Greek, German, and Sanskrit) with nothing more than the reader’s own erudition to make the connection between passages.

5. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne: You may need a dictionary and you can easily get lost in the multiple pages of descriptive digressions. Hawthorne himself admitted to adding a complete chapter (The Custom House) only because the book was otherwise too short to print.

6. Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco: Fans read Eco with a dictionary at hand, raving that his books are “for the strong of spirit, people with perseverance, willing to struggle in order to reach the ultimate truth that only the very few have mastered.”

7. The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: This not-quite-objective-history, not-quite-memoir, “literary investigation” weaves endless depressing narrative threads, using prose seemingly designed to punish. The palpable sense of despair and apathy comes less from the text, but from the reading thereof, and it forces most readers to abandon the fight.

8. Moby Dick, Herman Melville: This 600-plus-page book goes on and on—and on—about whaling techniques while remaining light on plot.

9. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand: Devotees recommend taking on the 1,000 page book in small doses, over a long period of time.

10. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy: Fans say it’s best to read a few chapters at a time, keep notes, rent the film, and then be sure to “do something special” to celebrate after you’ve finished it. In fact, many people have read it just to say they did.

Source: Times of India

Amazing

So guys, I think we should at least buy our copy of one of the above books and read them, if not all, what say,

I would personally go for the Naked Lunch.

You are free to choose your own,

But i would advise that you first read the summary of the books so you don't feel cheated.

Peace Out