Why break my budgets?

The middle class heaved a sigh of relief at the Budget 2003 proposals. Take a look at how it will affect your salary and taxes, retirement funds, home buying plan, shopping basket, investments in small savings, stocks and mutual funds.
Gautam Chikermane
NOISE–THAT'S how I would define the smart, 30-second sound-bites on TV by government officials, corporate captains, economists, analysts and tax experts following Budget 2003. But after an hour of this mindless cacophony, I find most of the common man’s concerns numbed into inertia. His critical concern–what should I do?–remains unacknowledged. In this package, we propose to help you steer clear of that dissonance and move into a quieter, more efficient (but less glamorous) financial harmony.
To give credit where it’s due, the finance minister has imparted dignity to the honest tax payer. By recognising "best tax compliance" and abolishing the discretion-based scrutiny, Jaswant Singh has indeed given the beginnings of respect, Samman, to the tax payer. This will also curb corruption, as will Singh’s announcement that all refunds will be directly credited to the taxpayer’s bank account. The rewriting of individual taxpayer’s form into one page is yet another step in the right direction. But in early 2002, when Singh’s predecessor tried this experiment, he ended up with a 10-page form, that needed another nine pages of ‘guidance notes’ to decode. Ironically, Yashwant Sinha called that outrage Saral. What will Singh do?
Opinion in Outlook Money

Give us a break!

The new tax returns forms, running into 10 pages (and nine more of explanatory notes), make a travesty of the word Saral.
Gautam Chikermane
Mr Yashwant Sinha
Finance Minister
Ministry of Finance
North Block
New Delhi - 110001
Dear Mr Minister,
Thank you for convincing me that I’m no common man: I’m one of only 20 million taxpayers in this country, which makes me a very rare specimen of our species indeed. Someone the government ought to treat with samman–to borrow one of the many meaningless words in the dense tax lexicon –for thanklessly financing its profligacy. A man who, even as he bears the weight of the economy and pays for the sins of tax evaders, is at the rock bottom of the pecking order of political attention. Way below the various vote banks, money banks and muscle banks.
The list of injustices done to tax-paying citizens is long and unending, but the latest crude and insensitive joke is Saral ITS-2 and Saral ITS-3, a particularly warped variant of the form released in July 1999. These are forms individuals have to fill while filing their tax returns. A sample of disclosures we’re expected to make:
Column in Outlook Money