India Budget 2023 for the Tech Employee

Since everyone and his uncle have an opinion on the bushes that way I presented in the parliament yesterday, let me do my own version of that too.

The philosophy: stop telling people, who earn, w what to do with their money. Let them take their decisions. Also, work on ease of doing business, while at it.

The policy: incentivise moving to a ‘no allowance’ way of thinking and planning.

The details:

compare the tax slabs to the previous ones. You will find that in most cases, you are better off keeping control of your money, and not having to buy EPF or NPS, just to save tax today. In the larger scheme of things, these investments may not make much of a difference to you.
You may find it less taxing if you do take benefit of: — Home loan interest payment — Donations under 80G
As a company, you do want your employees to take the new regime, so that you do not need to collect any documentation from them.
As an employee, from a privacy perspective, i do not need to expose my personal savings preferences to the business i work with. Sit back and all, why have you been sharing it for so many years ? Just to ‘save’ a few thousand rupees ? And all the paperwork is sitting in some warehouse somewhere, with no security, and will be there for 10+ years, because companies need to retain records, just in case. And, the more the information, the more chances it will leak, and no one will know.

The take away: this move is gutsy. It will take a while for people to stop thinking of the small amounts they can ‘save in taxes’, and focus more on ‘earning more’ and ‘investing right’, for their future, instead of the governments.

My views: Life is supposed to be simple. Keep it that way. Complexity is more expensive than it looks on the first scan.