Over 50 lakh government employees and 38 lakh pensioners can look forward to a higher DA (Dearness Allowance) component in their pay cheque from now on. The government has hiked the DA component from 45 per cent of basic pay to 51 per cent. The move is to take retrospective effect from January 1. The DA for government employees is usually reviewed twice a year in January and July. With India's largest employer hiking wages to tackle inflation, will the private sector follow suit?

Less misery!

Consumers can heave a sigh of relief as the Finance Minster has decided to do away with the 5 per cent service tax on healthcare services proposed in the Budget. Termed by hospitals and diagnostic labs as ‘misery tax', the levy was imposed on services provided by hospitals with central air-conditioning and with over 25 beds as well as on services provided by diagnostic labs to patients. Currently service tax is levied on health check-ups carried out by hospitals for employees of business entities and health services offered under insurance schemes. The rollback would avert a hike in the consumer's medical bill. According to news reports the service tax would have resulted in a consumer shelling out Rs 8,000 to Rs 20,000 more for a heart surgery and Rs 1.5-2 lakh more for a bone marrow transplant.

Lifetime prepaid broking

If you associate lifetime membership only with mobile phone connections or clubs, here's a new one for you. ICICI Securities, which operates the country's largest online trading platform- www.icicidirect.com- has come up with a plan where you can sign up for a lifetime's worth of stock or derivatives trading by paying a fixed brokerage upfront. There are four plans on offer: for Rs 25,000, Rs 50,000, Rs 75,000 and Rs 1,00,000. Once you top up your account with one of these sums, the actual brokerage on your transactions in the equity and futures segments will be adjusted from this sum. The catch? Well, “lifetime” here means 15 years. And remember, this account may work the best for hardcore traders who are sure of putting through a huge volume of transactions each year.

Online tracker for EPF

Have you switched your job recently and thinking twice on applying for transferring your PF amount? This is easy now, don't worry. Once you submit the form at EPF Office in your place, you can track it online! Yes, of the 120 provident offices in the country, 117 have been computerised and you can now check the status of your PF transfer application on-line. By visiting the EPF website at www.epfindia.nic.in and clicking on the ‘Know Your Claim Status' link, you can find the status of your claim. All that you are required to do is to provide the PF account number and select the region in which you submitted the form.

The officials of the Employee Provident Fund Organisation say the move is aimed to bring convenience to users; claim settlement is also made faster now.

More on gold funds

With increasing options to invest in gold through the ETF or Fund-of-Fund route, investors may wish to know the tax treatment meted out to this asset class. For one, gold ETFs will not suffer wealth tax. Taxation for gold ETFs and gold F-o-Fs is similar to debt funds. This means that if you hold gold funds for less than a year, the gains, if any, would attract short-term capital gains tax; wherein the profits would be taxed along with your regular income, in the tax slab in which you fall. If you sold the gold funds after a year, then you would incur long term capital gains of 10 per cent (without indexation) or 20 per cent (with indexation) on the gains.

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