Budget - 2017 - Suggestions

Following are my suggestions for union budget 2017:

1. Changes in Tax slabs. No tax upto 4 lakhs. The middle class and salaried class and pensioners have suffered severely because of demonetization. This is only way to cool down nerves.
2. Permanently waive of all surcharges or transaction charges for pos transactions and card transactions for value below Rs. 300. A person going to shop to just buy milk and newspaper daily cant pay extra charge as the value of swipe is less than Rs.10. This has prevented all from using cards to major extent. Indians are very sensitive to costs even if a rupee more also they will chose cheapest option. If govt cant waive off charges permanently for transactions of values less than Rs. 300 then please dont talk about "Digital India" it will never happen.
3. New Tax relief for installing renewable energy devices or buying electric or hybrid vehicles like scooters, cars, buses, trucks. the tax relief upto 1 lakh. The installation of solar panels, solar heater, solar water pumps in offices or homes which will save energy over long periods and commitment to climate change for india. The sales of electric vehicles is not picking up in India inspite of huge success of electric vehicles across the world years ago. The tax relief will create a demand from common people to buy electric vehicles. This will create new ecosystem. Car manufacturers keep complaining that charging devices not available. If this tax relief is given it will create demand for everything. Actually i wanted separate 1 lakh for renewable power installation and 1 lakh separately for electric vehicles purchases. but its upto govt to consider. Govt must seriously consider to create new jobs in this area. If this concept works well every house which has a DTH currently will install solar devices. Solar installation will give job employment for many. All electricians installing inverters will try to sell solar products and create more employment.
4. Farmers are not able to repay the interest portion of loans taken. Its better to make all loans to farmers as interest free in future. Its no point in having interest on farm loans in banks. Govt must look into this as farmers never make profit ever then how can they pay interest rates. The 3% subsidised interest rates dont make any point. Remove interest component in farm loans. After you link all rivers and put desalinated water for farming you can re-introduce interest rate till that no need interest rates. When govt after govt doing nothing seriously then why interest rates.
5. Please consider waive off of all farm loans there is severe distress due to poor rains. c) TN Farmers need to be given 3,000 crores atleast due to severe stress and no rain or water in cauvery.
6. Considering vardah damage to chennai and farmers death due to drought in Tamil Nadu. Specific announcement to release funds of 4,000 crores to Tamil Nadu is highly expected.
7. Modi Govt has failed to create jobs. All jobs currently existing have been because of investments done years ago. No new special economic zone has come to sight. a) Govt must work towards creating more SEZ spread across country for IT sector, defence sector, electronics, mechanical, etc,. b) without job creation modi cant escape any election. c) Major tax breaks to corporates who do major investment above 100 crores next year must be given tax breaks other than the general tax break. 
8. Revising 80C limits to 2 lakhs. A 50,000 increase is justified.
9. Revising health insurance limits to 50,000 as the different health insurance policies for individual and family floater exceeds 50,000. but current limits are too low for claim. please revise 80D limits.
10. Bio - Diesel Plants : India is importing too much fuel but no efforts to setup bio-diesel plants across India. Modi and his team has been doing rallied a few years ago but no efforts to setup bio-diesel plants. b) Bio - Diesel plants have to be independently setup by Railways also. Railways is a major consumer of diesel. Railways has been saying for years that plants from which bio-diesel can be extracted are yet to be planted along railway stations and along railway tracks c) No benefit has been to farmers to plant bio-diesel plants. No major effort by Agricultural ministry for years now. Your govt not serious about the impact of fuel import on Indian Economy d) There are vasts tracks of lands in drought prone areas and near Ramanathapuram in Tamil Nadu which is suitable to plant trees to extract bio-diesel.
11. Govt needs to give Rs. 2500 tax relief for tree plantations with proper photo proof submitted to state govt forest officials. Tree plantation and the labourers will get major boost. And commitment to climate change.
12. TDS on fixed deposits must be revised upto upper limit of 15,000.
13. New additional allowance for home loans upto 2.5 lakhs this year. 
14. Credit cards need to be given by public sector banks for those who have total value of transactions over 50,000 over a period of one year or hold account for more than 3 years and have pan card attached to bank account.Credit cards are not issued to general public easily in the name of CIBIL Score. The vicious circle of getting credit card to build credit score is very difficult. Only if someone issues the first credit card only then will the CIBIL score will build. PSB never give credit card easily but for mallya they have huge loans just for brand name(so foolish). 

• Retail credit pick up in urban and rural areas will pick up if Public sector banks issue credit card to those who hold . 
• Public sector banks can come together to give credit card under RuPay with lower limits for those who have very low CIBIL scores. 
• CIBIL never checks the total value of money transacted with the pan card which was used to apply for credit card. It plainly seems the salary.
• CIBIL is actually a joke according to me when normal public are not given a chance to build credit score
• Currently all banks give to only corporate employees. 
• Farmers get kisan credit card but general people who non corporate or non govt staff have to face lot of harassment to get credit cards.  

1. New investment option named Agri Engineering Fund. Investments upto 1 lakh per year must give returns of 9% for 3 year lock in, 8.5% for 2 years, 8% for 1 year. This will help in creating agricultural engineering unit under water resources which will purchase desalination plants for irrigation, modern equipments for farming, inter-linking of rivers, maintainence of lakes-rivers-ponds-river beds. Public are severely in need of new investment option outside of 80C every year which gives good returns. The interest rate need to be high as we need to see the interest of public towards farmers issues. Salaried and pensioners are already deprived of low interest rates in fixed deposits. Chidambaram earlier budgets prevented FD rates reduction and mutual funds lobby wanted to make equities more favourite. But actually salaried class and general public always lose all the money invested in stocks or returns are very less after subtracting various charges. So always in India debt based investment schemes will only help.
2. Need for NRI to invest in India. NRI have huge supply of cash but not invested in India for any major development project. They need to be given option to invest in India in various methods. Its upto Finance ministry to devise plans. 
3. Tax relief of 2,000 per year to consult certified Chartered accountant or auditor to file taxes. currently the public or business dont use auditor or CA to file taxes also. Some local guy without full knowledge of income tax rules or broker standing under tree collects details and files taxes without any seriousness on the impact on tax collection of Indian Company. All registered CA and auditor must be collated in centralized system with website. The CA in the area must be available for contact. Those in the area with pincode must be available for search. Govt has to contact concerned teams for same. This will also benefit those who consult CA for tax filing. This is base cost for salaried class for business it can be higher value of tax relief. This will re-define the way taxes are filed in India. Even if corporates file taxes on behalf of employees also can use this. Because employees tend to stock trading and other activities which corporate might not be aware or might not provide option to file taxes. So an auditor or CA is best option to consult for tax filing. 
4. New tax relief for digital payments upto 75,000  per year for public. An average salaried class professional takes insurance (50,000) inclusive of both life, vehicle and health. 24,000 per year for card swiping for shopping of daily needs. So 75,000 is bare minimum to give as tax relief to claim. This tax relief can be claimed based on certificate from bank or credit card company for amount paid. The amount considered must not include usage of ATM. The digital payments must definitely include payments of PoS, digital bill payments for mobile recharges/DTH/electricity bills, etc,., Clearly mention these words in budget. Because our stupid media wont tell good things. 

• This scheme of tax relief for digital payments will only help tax collection post the february when the cash circulation increases
• You cant control cash circulation as people will get angry
• but tax relief for tax relief will play a longer greater role as people will demand business to install pos.
• Even if a tax payer doesnt know how to claim tax credits. Once the person enters the details when filing income tax relief when he enters the bank details and the credit card details the same must be pulled from banks directly. This will enable in later for various purposes.
• This will make public to go towards shops which swipe cards as they get tax relief. Small shops in turn will try to learn and install pos devices.

8. Make brokerage firms responsible for tax deduction on behalf of customer. Many people are newly coming to stock markets and dont have knowledge of capital gains tax. Some people dont even file these gains in tax filing since they dont know. Its genuine case of not knowing because not all use the auditors for filing taxes. Some brokers sitting under tree collect income slips and file to their own fancies. So brokerage firms must be made responsible similar to TDS for Fixed deposits. b) Ask brokerage firms to pay these taxes every quarterly to tax department. c) All brokerage details and total earnings must be mapped to pan card and internally submitted to income tax every month end. d) If public or customer tries to file income tax without entering values for capital gains the income tax must pop up that public has demat account and has not filed.

9. The taxes on short term capital gains must be increased so that long term investments are promoted in stock markets. The short term and intra day transactions have made many lose money in huge volumes. Only very professional firms must do so that normal people dont lose money in short term transactions. So increasing short term capital gains will help in tax collection.

10. Most house owners never accept payments by online for the rent. So the digital payments for HRA must be created as a separate channel in the banking internet banking method and in bank branches to pay to the house owner. The same can later be used by the person to claim extra tax relief for the amount transferred. This will leave huge tax trail. Ask revenue secretary, RBI and Finance ministry and SBI to plan on how this has to get done. But this has to be done. Those who have one house for rent get paid online or cheque. But those who have more than 20 houses for rent as business dont pay tax. So this channel might force some to pay taxes. You cant say all must pay by online only but extra tax relief of 20% of upto 20,000 per year will force owners to comply.

11. Tax relief for all business who take payment by digital methods must be given tax relief upto 1.5 lakhs per year. This will help them to install pos devices. Currently most shops have the pos hidden as they know they are not interested in paying taxes.

12. Creating of Agriculture Engineering Unit under Ministry of Water Resources with initial corpus of 20,000 crores or more.

• Farmers in cauvery region in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka are heavily dependent only on river water for farming. The ministry of water resources has not taken any effort for decades now. After kings and british made efforts to build dams in the early years when rains were plenty. But currently the age of drought has set in. Geologists says cauvery basin will become desert in 2050. If Modi and his team is really worried about farmers they should do few modern fixes which have been successful globally.
• Farmers cant spend from their pockets the cost for new age farming techniques.
• The procedure to get funds from govt agencies is too difficult. Only those big farmers with political links can get those funds. Marginal farmers neither have the links or information to approach. Most farmers cant fill huge forms for claims.
• The agriculture engineering unit must handle all these activities on case by case basis based on various regions.
• The agriculture unit must procure modern equipments. Farmers cant take huge loans to do these activities with modern equipments.
• In Israel, issues with farming have been handled by desalination of sea water. Desalination plants will play a major role in thanjavur and surrounding areas at suitable areas for water for agriculture. 
• The Ministry of water resources has not been helped by Govt of India to do inter-linking of rivers in India. 
• During floods also crops get damaged there is no procedure to re-direct high quantity of water to different regions to save water for later purpose.
• The agriculture engineering unit must also take care of maintaining lakes and ponds, river beds raised by farmers.
• The farmers can request the unit through application online with photos uploaded and pin code of the region. Just few farmers if they request also with mobile numbers of any contact numbers the team must reach and start work.
• Govt of India must not handle farmers issues politically but with proper fixes like Israel for long time benefits for farmers and for GDP growth. 
• Modi and his ministers must give up ego to take up farmers issues with patience and try to understand what is the real issue. Just marketing wont help when the ground reality is very bad.
• Farmers both small and large will benefit if govt does proper planning.

13.  Farmers Life Insurance at Rs.30 per year for the farmer and his entire family. If its natural death or any death the farmer or his family must be given 2lakhs per death. The govt must not torture farmers with huge forms. But with just aadhar card number or fingerprint or voter id card. The rest of the family members details must be loaded initially itself with bank account number so that the family need not run behind the insurance companies.
The claim procedure must be very simple with both online and offline options. The money must be transferred online.
The insurance must continue for the rest of the family with payment every year. Its responsibility of the insurance company to send post with details to the family and also have online details mapped to aadhar number attached. Even if the family loses the details the same must be given.

14. Crop insurance scheme must be mapped to farmer who does the farming and not to the land owner. Since most land owners have left the villages to different towns or have gone abroad. Only local farmers are doing farming activity on their behalf. But the crop insurance has not focussed on this area and also the paperwork is too high for an illiterate farmers. If govt officials sitting in delhi do poor planning without proper ground work with village level officials then crop insurance wont reach the target farmers.

• Aadhar based or voter id card based application for crop insurance. 
• Crop insurance is not given to those farmers who dont take loans from banks
• If farmers or landless farmers apply for crop insurance without any loan also must be given. Banks are forcing farmers to take loans to take insurance.
• PM doesnt have any idea about farming it is very much clear in his speeches as he is not able to speak intricately on most topics on farming
• Farming is a common term but there are various categories and various farm produce. So govt must focus 
• PM doesnt know what happens in banks in rural areas how farmers are being harassed by giving them forms which they dont have any idea.
• PM doesnt have any idea that no private bank like Yes Bank or Kotak mahindra bank or HDFC bank dont open branches in rural areas or atleast all district headquarters across India. If Yes Bank wants to do crores of transaction in mumbai alone but rest of India it wont serve what kind of logic is this. If service industry they have to serve everyone. Neither RBI has been able to force them because of the corporate links. 

15. For children, Govt must introduce new scheme to have children in schools get bank account opened. It has been long term demand of RBI but Govt after Govt not hearing to it. RBI had given notification long time ago but no Govt made any effort to get school students open bank account.

• The govt once opening bank accounts for school children can do following to promote digital banking and financial literacy at young age. At least in next 5 years school students will enter ATM or shops to do shopping. They will enter into banks and question the officials. 
• The account can have special limits it had earlier been notified by RBI but the scheme did not pick up. PM has not done anything for children in a big way through banking. This must be a try.
• The central govt must give 365 per year for each student who registers under this scheme for parents with salary less than 3 lakhs. This Rs.365/year must be transferred to school students who open by this year end. All students who have got attendance above 60% for the year must be benefitted
• Same for college students must open bank account. The youth pm refers in every speech but this financial inclusion must be taken up. The youth can change the society. If govt transfers Rs.500/year for those students with parents salary less than 3lakhs based on attendance above 60%.
• It depends on govt to extend this feature in future or not. But it needs to be done definitely.
• The youth of our society easily get the sim card but to approach the bank branch they have the hesitation. In rural areas this hesitation is high that mental block has to go. Opening of bank accounts is over for adults but for school students and college students of low paid and uneducated parents is low.
• This scheme will be carried out by joint effort of school heads, state govts, HRD. Dont just give notification and go to sleep. Ensure everyone get.
• The money transfer is to really push everyone to open account. If you dont give cash no one will open.
• Even very rich and educated open accounts for their children only if they go to work.
• The first few transactions every year must be given rebates and discounts.

16. Govt must start farmers survey ever year. To understand what type of farming was done in that year in which season. The earnings and loss. What facilities they need. The farm survey will be an exercise must be done digitally by private firms with digital devices. The overall cost must not exceed 50 crores per state. If can be done by least cost way and to collect more data.

17. public sector Banking for farmers: a) Time to approve loans is very difficulty. illerate farmers are harassed for application b) Farmers who do farming on others lands must be given crop insurance c) farmers and their family must be covered with insurance at 30 per year. d) gold loans are top favorite of farmers but public sector banks never give or take very long processing time. The processing time must come to less than 24 hours.

18. National Highways - 1) Need more EPC contracts to create new national highways. Try to create tindivanam - thanajavur as National highway. The road is currently narrow but has high capacity to grow. Please work with TN Govt. 2) EPC contracts for the East Coast road project across entire Tamil Nadu. National highways must focus on working fast on this project. The project can get some share of TN govt also 3) NH can place tolls in suitable areas in EPC projects to earn for long terms. Why should contractors earn money when cost of land and others beared by state and central govt .

19. Telecom - a) Ask Mobile networks to reduce costs of SMS. b) SMS costs without any special packs must be brought down to 2paise. Currently Rs.1 per SMS is too high when cost to network is very low at 1 paise per SMS. c) Mobile networks sell off tower business to reduce debt. But actually tower business selling will lead to more call drops. TRAI doesnt interfere when mobile networks sell off towers. d) There is no proper online mechanism to report to TRAI in online website format for various issues - spam messages, spam emails, call harrassement, phone tapping.

20. Disaster Management - Cyclone and Tsunami Warning in Andaman needed a) No sirens installed along beaches to notify to public immediately incase of any sudden warning. b) If andaman office or delhi office detects any earthquake and siren is issued people will understand and run away from beaches. But police going and telling each one wont be possible c) We lost lot of lives in Tamil Nadu due to tsunami but still we have not installed any sirens.

21. Farmers - a) New scheme to create free bore wells for those who request with less than 5 hectares of land with just voter card or aadhar card. no stressful application. b) Free solar pumps for very poor farmers as just bore wells wont help or electric motor or whatever is feasible.

22. Sports - a) Giving pension to all sportspersons who have represented India in international level irrespective of won medals or not b) Pension to sports person who have made to be national level competitions and with or without winning medals. Stories of many sportsperson to make ends meet.

23. Railways - a) No Fare Hike as new trains are run at special fares. b) Double Decker trains in day time c) Still installation of vending machines in trains is awaited d) Dustbins have not been created in railway coaches only temporary plastic bins are kept and staff just put it along tracks e) ICF sub unit in Trichy golden rock workshop f) Getting license for making EMU coaches with modern asthetics like metro coaches, Railways must order AC EMU coaches to find new revenue sources. Railways similar to LHB coaches can get license to make in india and get the copy of the coach design to make on its own. g) Its high time the EMU coaches in MRTS route of Velachery to Beach are modified in Chennai. The rakes are very old. h) Waiting for installation of LED coach position display units for suburban and express train platforms i) Doubling of Thanjavur to Mayiladuthurai stretch in DRM Trichy division j) No ticket inspectors in all exit points of all major express train stations.

24. Schools - a) Centrally sponsored scheme to build modern KV schools with sports facilities b) Exposure to all sports c) There is scope to get many medals in swimming, atheletics, gymanstics but lack of facilities

25. Tourism - a) Air India must operate to top 25 tourist destinations in India b) Free 10 lakh POS in even road side vendors in tourist spots.

26. Swachh Bharat - a) No usage of swachh bharath cess to deploy dust bins b) Lack of dustbins in beaches

27. Smart Cities - a) Need to add kancheepuram and thiruvallur in suburbs of Chennai b) Convert the power lines to under ground cables c) Sewage to energy contracts d) CCTV in all traffic junctions e) Free Wi-Fi zones in schools, govt offices, colleges, railway stations f) Solar schemes targeted for that smart city g) Ambulance GPS to enable easy movement h) GPS on public transport devices and integrated by App for public to track bus to plan travel

28. Pollution - a) Tax - relief for purchase of electric vehicle

29. Digitial India - a) Complete digitisation of govt health centres, pharmacy of govt hospitals and entire data b) Digitisation and computers for govt schools with permanent facility in Tamil Nadu year after year laptops are given. But central govt has not spend a rupee for digital india for schools. Schools augumented with permanent computers and computer labs with internet will play a good role. Without doing anything saying digital india looks very fake

30. Taxation  - a) Govt must introduce free software for taxation, inventory management, bill generation, employee salary payment. the free software must be created with best IT company in India which must be easy to use and suitable for all to learn and implement. It should do calculation based on latest tax rates even after GST gets implemented it must work. Option to enter company name for bill generation. The software must work both offline and online b) Separate website to understand tax rules easily with question and answers portion c) Type of business and the type of tax rules to follow d) The website must work without any login or registration or any detail collection e) Details of CA or auditor to contact to learn taxation

31. Introducing swiping devices in public transport locations. We cant use our debit card directly. hence if infrastructure in public transports like autos, govt buses, railways, metros, taxis. The sub-card can be taken by existing bank account holders as a separate card with limits of Rs.4000. The rest can be recharged online. The transport card must be created by RBI and banks working together. Currently daily public transport needs are high.