FREELANCERS EXEMPT FROM GST: There is good news for freelancers and small services providers in India who have an annual turnover of less than Rs. 20 lakh. I quote here one of the recommendations made by the GST Council in its 22nd Meeting held on 06 October 2017: Relief for Small and Medium Enterprises 4. Presently, anyone making inter-state taxable supplies, except inter-State job worker, is compulsorily required to register, irrespective of...

Here’s a plan for a conservative investor who aims to earn a regular income/pension from his investments in mutual funds and expects a return that is better than what bank fixed deposits offer him at this point. The Indian equity market is expensive on today’s date. The current PE (price to earnings, one of those markers that show how expensive the market is) of the NIFTY is near 22 against a historical average of 18. See here....

‘Is it a good time to invest in the stock market?’ If you are an investor in the Indian equity market and either put money directly into equities or through a mutual fund, you’ll have to answer this question often for yourself of for your friends and relatives. Is there any single piece of statistics that can tell you how expensive or cheap the market is at any specific point in time? For Indian investors, the easiest way to...

In today’s post Value Research’s Dhirendra Kumar has written on the misconception that mutual fund investors have about dividends. But most investors are aware that there is a difference between dividends from stocks and those from the mutual funds. Whereas in stocks, dividend means an additional income, in mutual funds the investor is withdrawing a portion of his own money. If I am paid Rs. 2000 from my mutual fund investment as...

It appears that for the investors who have deposited money in Alchemist Infra Realty Limited’s different fixed deposit schemes, it will be a long wait now until they may hope for a refund and recoup their losses. There have been considerable uncertainties of late about the financial status of the company and  many complaints from investors that cheques issued by the company have bounced and now the Securities and Exchange Board of...

Recently I became the victim of a financial ponzi scheme. Some years ago an acquaintance pleaded with me to invest some money in a fixed deposit scheme of a private company that was offering a few percentage points more interest than a much safer bank deposit. Although I am financially savvy enough to understand the implications and risks of such an investment, I did put in some money in that scheme only because it made that person happy. The...