The salaried will benefit

Apropos ‘Ringing in the new’ (February 4), the income-tax cuts and slabs proposed in Budget 2023 have come as a pleasant surprise for the salaried class. The increase in personal income tax exemption limit from ₹2.5 lakh to ₹3 lakh under the new regime will nudge taxpayers to transition.

Reportedly, close to one crore individuals in the ₹5-7 lakh income range stand to gain from the government’s decision to increase the rebate level to ₹7 lakh. Several of these individuals are unable to use the benefits available for investment in specified savings instruments — such as public provident fund or five-year fixed deposits.

These individuals will not have to pay any tax, irrespective of the amount of deductions that they are able to claim due to the savings. Also, it needs to be factored in that savings increase as the income level goes up, as there is higher disposable income. In addition, the government also proposes to extend ₹50,000 standard deduction to salary earners under the new tax regime to the benefit of the taxpayers.

N Sadhasiva Reddy

Bengaluru

The Adani imbroglio

Gautam Adani’s explanatory statements with regard to the strength of his companies’ fundamentals and robustness of the group’s balance-sheets do not gel with facts of reputed investment banks like Credit Suisse declining to accept the securities issued by his companies as collateral for loans.

The group’s unconscionably high leverage levels had already been red-flagged by Fitch Ratings as also Credit Suisse much earlier and this in itself should have alerted the Adanis to come up with strategies to rejig their expansion plans and reconfigure their finances by infusing more equity.

MP Muralidharan

Bengaluru

Surely, there’s more to it

There is definitely something more than what meets the eye in the manner Adani Enterprises managed to garner enough subscriptions to sail through the FPO offer and then withdraw it. The downtrend in the group stocks continues. It is sad that many of the retail investors will have suffered losses more than what they can take. If the trend does not stop, there are going to be plenty of stories of individuals going bust.

The silence of the government and the coverage of the issue over mainstream television channels indicates that the group has something to hide.

Anthony Henriques

Mumbai

Scope for further probe

The share prices of Adani Group companies are in free fall, in bourses thanks to the report of Hindenburg Research LLC, an investment research firm.

The unanswered 88 questions put to the Adani Group, which encompassed a torrent of aspects, including inquiries about the original source of funds used by the 38 or so offshore shell companies to invest in Adani companies, give enough leads to an investigation into the alleged frauds.

The nationalist narrative used to trash the report needed to be discouraged; as Hindenburg put it, “fraud cannot be obfuscated by nationalism.”

Haridasan Rajan

Kozhikode, Kerala

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