Minimum Authorised Share Capital required for Companies in India

There are many important points to be noted before fixing up the authorised share capital of the companies in India. Here is my article that discusses this topic in detail.

click here to read.....it's interesting, don't skip

Rules about investments in trading companies in India

A trading company incorporated in India may issue shares or convertible debentures to the extent of 51% of its capital under the Automatic route to non-residents subject to the condition that remittance of dividend to the shareholders outside India is made only after the company has secured registration as an export / trading / star trading / super trading house from the Director General of Foreign Trade in the Ministry of Commerce.

click here for more.....

Foreign Direct Investments in India

Investment under sector specific guidelines

Investments by a person resident outside India can be made under the Automatic route if the investment falls within the sector specific investment guidelines. FIPB permission is required for investments beyond the sector specific investment guidelines, or where specific approval is required.

click here to know more.....

Foreign Investments in India

The Central Government’s liberalization and economic reforms programme aims at rapid and substantial growth and integration with the global economy in a harmonised manner. Industrial policy reforms have reduced industrial licensing requirements, removed restrictions on investments and expansion and facilitated easy access to foreign technology and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

click here to read more.....

India - An Attractive Investment Location

There are several good reasons for investing in India:

- One of the largest economies in the world with a stable democratic environment throughout 60 years of independence

- Large market size with middle class population of 250-350 million, along with increasing purchasing power reflected by remarkable increase in purchase of consumer durables in recent years

read more....

Business and Investment Climate in India

ECONOMIC FACTORS

The Indian economy rapidly integrates with the world economy. A foreign investor who is interested to undertake business in India will find tremendous opportunities. The Industrial Policy of India offers a great deal of freedom to business houses and entrepreneurs to make their own investment decisions.

India has seriously gone through more than a decade of economic reforms. Continuity in the economic / global liberalisation process and the political consensus that economic change necessitates has placed India on a growth path.....

read more....

Business Incubation and Bootstrapping Services - a solution for Startup Challenges

A nice article by my dear friend - Anand Nataraj. A must-read content...

Click here to read

Post-incorporation Procedures

What are the procedures to be followed after incorporating / floating / registering a company ?

Click Here for knowing the procedures

How to form a company in India?

It's been a dream for most of us to be an entrepreneur. Those who want to incorporate a company in India can go through my article to have a clear understanding of the procedures.

Click here to read the article

Tax Structure in India


1) Qus. : What are you doing?
Ans.: Business.
Tax: PAY PROFESSION TAX!

2) Qus. : What are you doing in Business?
Ans.: Selling the Goods.
Tax: PAY SALES TAX!!

3) Qus. : From where are you getting Goods?
Ans.: From other State/Abroad
Tax: PAY CENTRAL SALES TAX, CUSTOM DUTY & OCTROI!

4) Qus. : What are you getting in Selling Goods?
Ans.: Profit.
Tax: PAY INCOME TAX!

5) Qus. : Where are you Manufacturing the Goods?
Ans.: Factory.
Tax: PAY EXCISE DUTY!

6) Qus. : Do you have Office / Warehouse/ Factory?
Ans.: Yes
Tax: PAY MUNICIPAL TAX!

7) Qus. : Do you have Staff?
Ans.: Yes
Tax: PAY STAFF PROFESSION TAX!

8) Qus. : Doing business in Millions?
Ans.: Yes
Tax: PAY TURNOVER TAX!

9) Qus. : Are you taking out over 25,000 Cash from Bank?
Ans.: Yes, for Salary.
Tax: PAY CASH HANDLING TAX!

10) Qus. : Where are you taking your client for Lunch & Dinner?
Ans.: Hotel
Tax: PAY FOOD & ENTERTAINMENT TAX!

11) Qus. : Are you going Out of Station for Business?
Ans.: Yes
Tax: PAY FRINGE BENEFIT TAX!

12) Qus. : Have you taken or given any Service/s?
Ans.: Yes
Tax : PAY SERVICE TAX!

13) Qus. : How come you got such a Big Amount?
Ans.: Gift on birthday.
Tax: PAY GIFT TAX!

14) Qus. : Do you have any Wealth?
Ans.: Yes
Tax: PAY WEALTH TAX!

15) Qus. : To reduce Tension, for entertainment, where are you going?
Ans.: Cinema or Resort.
Tax: PAY ENTERTAINMENT TAX!

16) Qus. : Have you purchased House?
Ans.: Yes
Tax : PAY STAMP DUTY & REGISTRATION FEE !

17) Qus. : How you Travel?
Ans.: Bus
Tax: PAY SURCHARGE!

18) Qus. : Any Additional Tax?
Ans.: Yes
Tax: PAY EDUCATIONAL, ADDITIONAL EDUCATIONAL & SURCHARGE ON ALL THE CENTRAL GOVT.'s TAX !!!

19) Qus. : Delayed any time Paying Any Tax?
Ans.: Yes
Tax: PAY INTEREST & PENALTY

Nice One !!

Received a forwarded funny message from one of my colleagues and thought I could share it with you !!

If you have difficulty in understanding the current world financial situation, the following should help...

Once upon a time in a village in India, a man announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10.

The villagers seeing there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at $10, but, as the supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their efforts. The man further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer rate increased to $25 and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now act as buyer, on his behalf.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when he returns from the city, you can sell them back to him for $50.'

The villagers squeezed together their savings and bought all the monkeys.

Then they never saw the man or his assistant again, only monkeys everywhere!

"Welcome to WALL STREET"

Rain is a Pain ??

Yesterday, the 24th day of October 2008, I had a terrific experience while returning back to home in the evening. I got a call from home saying that it was still raining, the area where I reside is completely flooded with waters and no vehicle can enter the road. Though I imagined the situation, I thought I could manage.

Scene 1: Raining heavily

Scene 2: With heavy laptop on hand, I was standing inside a crowd where everyone was looking to catch an auto.

Scene 3: No auto-driver was ready to carry us because of rains, water stagnation and traffic jam.

Scene 4: I won at my tenth attempt, a driver came for rescue, but said he would charge 100 bucks (you know, normally it takes 30, but they know that when demand increases, prices also increase).

Scene 5: Thought problem solved, but not really.

Scene 6: Water peeped inside the auto and struck off at one place midway through. He did some magic and got it ready.

Scene 7: Again stopped in few minutes for lack of fuel. Long queue on the nearby petrol bunk, waited for 25 minutes to get the filling.

Scene 8: Since we couldn’t take the direct route considering the road conditions, he showed me the city for 100 bucks and finally reached North Boag Road from where my home is about few minutes drive.

Scene 9: Held up in traffic and couldn’t move a little bit….it was still raining, vehicles were completely mess-up, two staff buses were facing each other blocking the entire road…

Scene 10: After waiting for 20 minutes in auto, paid him the cash and needed to walk down.

Here comes the catch,,,

- water levels on the ground were above my knee levels,
- no space to move here or there
- grounds were already in digged condition for some piping work, hence not sure which way to walk
- Few electrical wires were hanging from transformer boxes
- Many cars were struck on the roads, and couldn’t move back

Though it looks silly, the situation made me to feel whether some thing wrong will happen.

After confirming that my insurance policies are alive currently, I walked in the middle of the road on the drainage-mixed rain waters. Finally, reached home safely though my Franco Leone shoes (worth 2k INR) have lost its life.

Fixed Maturity Plan : Favour of the Season

We have many FMPs from different Asset Management Companies from time to time. It is a very good instrument and offers few benefits which are unique if compared to other debt instruments. I’m pleased to share a detailed product note on this subject to refresh the memory of all.

About FMPs:

FMPs are closed ended funds with a fixed maturity period which could be as little as 15 days or as long as five years. Objective of this investment is to protect the investors against market volatility and generate steady returns.

Working of FMPs:

FMPs are managed as a passive scheme and the fund manager looks to invest money in instruments with maturities corresponding to the maturity of the plan. For example – a 90 day FMP will invest in instruments that mature within this period. The fund manager locks the investments at a certain yield at the time of inception itself which protects the principal and fights against volatility.

They invest primarily in fixed return investments like Government bonds and money market instruments (very short-term fixed return investments) which are almost risk-free investments.

Investment Pattern:

FMP predominantly invests in debt instruments or some high quality corporate papers with a rating, Government Securities, bonds etc.

Advantages of investment in FMP are

a) Fights interest rate risk
b) Fights market volatility
c) Capital Protection

Tax Calculation:

Returns generated by FMPs come under the purview of Capital Gains.

For Short-term: less than a year

If an investor puts money in a FMP of less than one year tenure, then the entire capital gains is combined with the income and is taxed according to the tax bracket the investor falls into. If the investor falls in the tax bracket of 30%, then the returns are taxed at 33.99% (including surcharge and education cess).

For Long-term: One year or more than one year

If an investor invests in a 12 months or more than 12 months series, then he would be taxed at :

10% without indexation
20% with indexation

Who should invest in ?

For investors who are risk-averse and do not want to play with their savings, this is the option. Even those investors who have some money and want to invest for a very short period of time then this is the best option. Investors can also avail tax benefits by investing in a one year plus FMPs which offers indexation benefits, especially in the month of March.

E-mail communications can be considered as vaild evidence:

The new company law which is being drafted by the government is likely to recognise e-mails as a valid piece of evidence. With corporates relying on e-mails for bulk of their communication, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs is planning to recognise electronic communication by corporates as evidence during company law prosecutions.

Regulatory changes in this regard would clear the air on the evidentiary value of electronic communication including emails. With the present law on the subject yet to gain clarity, it is felt that the move would tighten the noose around companies, who often bank upon regulatory loopholes to save themselves.

Officials say that the new company law, expected to be placed in Parliament soon, would provide for necessary changes to this effect. The changes are likely to provide prosecuting agencies a strong hand in their crackdown on matters of infringement of company law provisions.

Under the present law, there is no specific recognition of e-mails as evidence. Officials point out that this lack of clarity has often been exploited by companies facing prosecution. The officials also point out that the basic ground work towards the move is almost ready with the inception of the ministry's e-governance project. The project named MCA-21 has enabled computerisation of documents and records filed by companies.

The new company law has laid substantial importance to both means to check corporate frauds as well as ways to crack them. The government feels that companies should not be let off due to lack of evidence.

It is also learnt that the government at various levels is trying to harmonise related legislation's like Information Technology Act and Evidence Act on the subject, so as to avoid regulatory overlaps.

Even as the company law awaits amendments to this effect, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) feels corporate e-mails could be crucial evidence in cartel investigations. The CCI recommends enterprises to maintain a check on electronic correspondence of its marketing personnel and distributing agents to ensure that they do not engage themselves in anti-competitive activities.

Great Methods of Marketing:


1. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to

her and say: "I am very rich, Marry me!"

- That's Direct Marketing... "
________________________________________


2. You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see

a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her

and pointing at you says: "He's very rich, Marry him."

-That's Advertising. .."
________________________________________


3. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her

and get her telephone number. The next day, you call and

say: "Hi, I'm very rich, Marry me

- That's Telemarketing. .."
________________________________________


4. You're at a party and see gorgeous girl. You get up

and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour

her a drink, you open the door (of the car)"Marry Me?"

- That's Public Relations... "
________________________________________


5. You're at a party and see gorgeous girl. She walks

up to you and says: "You are very rich!

"Can you marry ! me?"

- That's Brand Recognition. .."
________________________________________


6. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to

her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!" She gives you

a nice hard slap on your face.

- "That's Customer Feedback..."
________________________________________


7. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to

her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!" And she

introduces you to her husband.

- "That's demand and supply gap..."
________________________________________


8. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to

her and before you say anything, another person come

and tell her: "I'm rich. Will you marry me?" and she

goes with him

- "That's competition eating into your market share..."
________________________________________

9. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to

her and before you say: "I'm rich, Marry me!" your wife arrives.

- "That's restriction for entering new markets..."

The CFO’s first hundred days

McKinsey Global Survey about Chief financial officers around the world describes their first hundred days on the job as a time when most received guidance, but many had difficulty devoting enough time to their top priorities.

New chief financial officers may not be spending their time where it’s most needed, according to the survey.

Finance chiefs, globally and across industries, report spending most of the first hundred days on budgeting, management reporting, and financial reporting. By contrast, they think that the most crucial activities during that time are understanding the drivers of the business, providing input into corporate strategy, and building the finance team.

Why are there such differences between what they do and what they regard as important?

There is no simple answer to this. One cannot put the clock back. Every day the situation changes, and the responses and actions will have to be tuned to the situation. CFO must be able to assess the business needs and act.

Fortunately for new CFOs, as they respond to their fluid situations most have strong support from the CEO. More than three-quarters of the respondents say that they received explicit guidance from the CEO in the first hundred days on the job, and 46 percent say that the CEO was a mentor. CFOs also are more likely to name the CEO than anyone else as having been helpful in making big decisions early on.

Almost twice as many CFOs credit the CEO with playing that role as credit their finance staff. A majority of CEOs strongly support the CFO’s involvement in strategy; more than half of our CFOs say that the CEO expects them to challenge the company’s strategy, though CEOs see other activities as more important. Nearly 90 percent of CEOs encourage the CFO to be an active member of the senior-management team. This is good news for CFOs, given the ongoing evolution of their role, the increasing visibility of their statutory responsibilities, and their considerable interest in corporate-wide strategic initiatives.

Indeed, nearly three-quarters of the CFOs reported that they would like to be involved in strategy, and those who wished they had spent more time with the CEO say that they wanted to talk about strategy more than anything else.

Finally, relatively few CFOs say that the finance staff would explicitly articulate its expectations to a new CFO. However, when staff members did provide explicit guidance, the CFOs say, their priorities differed from those of CFOs and CEOs. This makes a CFO’s communications with the finance team all the more crucial. A CFO is likelier to communicate with the team ad hoc and in person than in any other way.

Alignment of expectations, nearly four-fifths of the CFOs report that the CEO provided explicit guidance about expectations of the new CFO; CFOs at private companies were significantly more likely to report getting such guidance than those at public ones.

CFOs overall say that the activities the CEO most often describes as important are being an active member of the senior-management team, contributing to the company’s performance, and ensuring that the finance organization is efficient.

Furthermore, more than two-thirds of CFOs say that the CEO expected them to improve the quality of the finance organization, and more than half that the CEO expected them to challenge the company’s strategy.

CFOs overall showed little propensity to make fundamental staffing changes during the first hundred days, though CFOs of private companies were more likely to do so than their counterparts at public ones.

CFOs who planned fundamental changes in financial accounting and reporting or financial planning, budgeting, and analysis (FP&A) were significantly more likely than not to have had formal plans to do so. Overall, FP&A and accounting are two out of the three areas that demand most of a new CFO’s time, as well as the areas where CFOs made the most fundamental changes.

CFOs hired during or after a turnaround are more likely to report that redesigning the finance organization was crucial. Building relationships, most CFOs tell us they communicated widely during the first hundred days, holding regular in-person meetings with the core finance team and the broader finance staff and (in many cases) making themselves available for ad hoc discussions as well.

Interestingly, CFOs who report being satisfied with their performance during the first hundred days are far more likely than those who are not satisfied to report having held in-person meetings with both the core finance team and the broader finance staff.

They also report having more communications overall. CFOs at large companies tend to report communicating across every channel (except broadcast e-mail) more than CFOs at smaller companies do.

CFOs hired at companies during or just after a turnaround are much more likely to report having used ad hoc communications - probably a result of the fast pace and high uncertainty common in such situations. These CFOs are also more likely to have held in-person meetings with the finance staff.

Relatively few CFOs—just over a quarter—report not having enough resources and support to make the transition a success. However, that figure rises to a third among CFOs of public companies.

CFOs who wanted more help most often said they would have liked three things:
- better access to internal information,
- more time with the CEO or the board, and
- the ability to bring new people into the finance organization.

Also, more than 60 percent of CFOs overall report that they would have liked to spend more time with business unit heads. Of the two-thirds of respondents who were external candidates for the CFO role, a majority report that the major challenges during the first hundred days were building credibility and understanding processes.

Letter from a man who married a CA (imaginary one)

SHOULD U MARRY A CA...??

When I told my mom that I wanted a professional woman as my wife, she got me one – “a Chartered Accountant” and I started facing the following problems.

She uses LIFO method while taking out the refrigerated food for cooking. She thinks I am no good at figure work. Fine with me, for now she handles the budget of the house.

Initially she used to send me a bill at the month end, but when I told her that I am not her client but her husband, she asks for the money in advance. The expenses had been rising steadily over the months, so one day I snooped into the papers maintained in a current file. No wonder! She was charging conveyance and overtime to the house budget.

She is crazy, I tell her but she corrects me. "No my darling, I am the auditor." I fail to see the light.

Every scrap of the paper in our house is filed. She tells me as per some Ordinance she must keep a copy of every thing for at least ten years before destroying it. I am worried.

The other day we had an hour-long fight. Later, I got to know that she had charged that hour to a client of hers, in the time sheet. My time was put down as unoccupied.

She says that she loves me and I tell her that I love her too. However, she never believes me. She says that there is susceptibility of it being a misstatement. Duh! She wants my representation on this & opinion of some Expert!

Not a long time back my brother's wedding was to be solemnized. Wedding cards had been sent. After some time I started receiving a steady trickle of letters. I was puzzled until my wife explained that external evidence was more reliable. She had called for confirmations from all those to whom cards were sent.

When she cooks, my wife at times does not go by recipe. Where the recipe says add half-teaspoon vinegar, one tsp black salt or one teacup of water, she ignores them. She says that they are not material when taken in context of whole meal being prepared.

She is crazy, I tell you. Surprisingly everybody calls her an auditor, instead. I checked the dictionary and it did not state that auditor is a synonym for crazy. The dictionary must be outdated.

When we got married, she had given me an Engagement Letter and I had said how cute-how sweet. Now she gives it to me every year saying that her standards state that it must be sent anew if there is any indication that I have misunderstood the objective and scope of engagement. Huh!

Apart from sending me the engagement letter once again, she says I can't get rid off her just like that. She says that she has the right of being heard before I appoint some one else. It seems I must keep reading one local and another English newspaper published and circulated in the vicinity of our house for more details.

Phew! For a minute, I thought that we had jeopardized our going concern status. Duh! Dare I say so?? I am told by one of my female colleagues who is married to a CA that the scenario is even worse when the guy is a CA.

Apparently he capitalised the wedding expenses as preliminary expenses and is writing it off every year.

Also the time he spent dating his wife before marrying her is still under consideration for valuation under AS-26...valuation of intangible assets.
So guys please think twice....should u really marry a CA? And yes please discount it by the appropriate rate to arrive at the present value of the risk of doing so !!!

Is it possible to follow this ???

India India India !!! (Believe it or not)

Do you know that India is the richest country in the world!

Right now, India is the richest country in the world! Wondering how?

It's really amazing.

It's due to Mr. G Vaidyaraj, who donated all his wealth, about which he actually did not know. He is a descendent of Raja Krishnadev Raya from Mysore district.

For the last 300 years or so, three stones were worshipped in his house. But nobody tried to see what it was, except this person, who is a lawyer by profession. One day, when there was nobody in his house, he took the stone out to see what it was that they worship.

Due to the dust deposited on it, from many many years, it looked only like a simple stone. But when he touched it, some portion of the stone was cleansed. And he saw a bright ray of light. He saw something which attracted his attention. And he was amazed when he cleaned all of them. The whole room was filled with light.

He discovered they were diamonds of about 4600 carats each.

He informed the Govt. of India and the news is censored with its security. It's now deposited in a Swiss Bank.

The cost of single diamond exceeds the GDP of USA + UK .

India can buy virtually 7 developing nations.

Even World Bank does not have enough money to buy it.

One diamond costs thrice the debt of World Bank over India .

One such diamond can buy 10 Bill Gates to you.

And the World Bank has proposed the Indian Govt. that it can pay India in Installment if it wishes to do so.

India 's GDP is 34.25 billion dollars.

Bill Gates property is 95 billion dollars approximate so that is the way 'nature changes'.

Our Prime Minister has refused to sell it. He said it will be sold or mortgaged for credit when we need it.

Otherwise right now we have no problems.

You can go through Times of India with a small column on it a week ago.

Star TV presented a 115 min documentary on it about 15 days ago.

The Hindu with its half page article in it.

After that it was censored as classified.
============================
Another good news is that in the Desert of Thar, a deposit of Oil and Natural gas have been found. This stores what Kuwait has in its stomach..

India can go with this ONGC energy reserve with another 30 years.

And moreover it can export it to other counties.

It's incredible!! But true.
============================
An Indian boy in his 12th standard has disproved Einstein's 'Theory of Relativity'.
Shocked? Read on...

Sudarshan Reddy has theoretically proven the existence of a sub-atomic particle, which can travel at speed greater than that of light, thereby challenging one of the fundamental postulates of the 'Theory of Relativity'.

In his recent research paper submitted to the Institute of Advanced Physics (IAP) at Trieste ( Italy ), Sudarshan has proved the existence of a class of sub-atomic particles called leptons', which can travel faster than light. The international physics community is shocked by this discovery.

Dr.Massimo Martelli, President of the IAP has this to say about the paper submitted by Sudarshan. 'After long, careful and critical analysis, I can confidently say that Sudarshan's re search papers show tremendous leap in our understanding of physics. His investigation mounts up on 'leptons'. His work builds substantially on the work of Einstein and others in the field of relativity.'

When physicists from Princeton University tried to measure Sudarshan's IQ with an IQ-meter (at the American Embassy in Delhi ), the meter broke down.

Sudarshan, incidentally, is the brother of Madhu Reddy, the Indian whiz kid who developed an operating system superior to Microsoft Windows.

We should all be very proud of these boys !!

It's better to file physical returns, as online mode is complicated and doubles your work

Salaried individuals these days can pay most bills online. But what about income tax returns?

Salaried individuals and Hindu undivided families (HUFs) can file their tax returns online (also called e-filing). However, it is not compulsory for them to do so. In many cases, it may not even be desirable.

Reason: it can be troublesome.

Consider: Without a digital signature, you still have to go the tax office to submit your forms. It thus doubles your work. Getting a digital signature costs you upwards of Rs.1,000, and even that will work only for one year or two. You have to keep paying for renewing your digital signature.

Two, the government has not bothered to update certain tax changes in the online forms. Thus you may claim mediclaim deductions of Rs15,000, but the site will only allow you Rs10,000.

Three, e-filing is supposed to do away with paperwork. But some provisions in the Income Tax Act have been left unchanged, and thus the taxman may still insist that you submit tax proof (like form 16 given by employers).

Four, even after you have finished filling in the e-form, it may take three or four time to upload it.

To file taxes online, individuals have to log on to https:www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in. But don't expect this to be a smooth affair.

After logging onto the website, the right Indian Income Tax Return (ITRs) form has to be chosen. There are eight ITRs from which you will have to choose the one that applies to you.

For most salaried individuals, ITR-1 will do as long as they don't have any capital gains or income from house property. For those who do, ITR-2 is the form to fill up.

Once the relevant form has been identified, it has to be downloaded from the following link https:incometaxindiaefiling.gov.inportalindividual_huf.do. This form is an excel file.

There are certain glitches in the ITR 2 excel form. For the financial year 2007-08 (or assessment year 2008-09), the maximum deduction allowed for paying mediclaim premiums under Section 80D of the Income Tax Act was Rs15,000, and Rs20,000, in case of senior citizens. This form it seems hasn't been updated.

"The column for mentioning deduction under section 80 (D) pertaining to mediclaim deductions doesn't accept an amount above Rs10,000, in spite of the fact that the deduction limit was increased during Budget 2007 to Rs15,000 for individuals and Rs20,000 for senior citizens," says Paras Savla, a chartered accountant who runs Paras Savla & Associates.

It allows a deduction of Rs10,000 and Rs15,000 for senior citizens, as was the norm for financial year 2006-07 (or assessment year 2007-08). Therefore, if you are a senior citizen paying a mediclaim premium of more than Rs15,000, the maximum deduction this form will allow you is Rs15,000.

The form needs to be filled up with the help of Form 16 (given by your employer). Once the form has been filled up, it needs to be saved as an XML file. You don't need to be an expert for this. The form has a "generate -XML" button in-built into it. After this you need to create a user ID and password. The user ID is actually your income tax permanent account number (PAN).

After logging in using the user ID and password, you will have to click on the submit return link on the home page of https:www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in. While uploading the file, you need to encrypt the file using a digital signature. A digital signature ensures that no one else files your return.

After you have encrypted the file, you need to upload it. A digital signature is essentially a file which needs to be installed on your computer. When e-filing the return, portions of this file need to be pasted at specified places in the form.

There are various intermediaries in the market who issue this signature. Some of the intermediaries are MTNL CA, TCS, etc. Depending on which intermediary you approach, the digital signature can be obtained for a period of one or two years and usually costs above Rs.1,000.

This makes the entire process of filing income tax returns online relatively more expensive.

Fees for physical filing of tax returns differ from one chartered accountant (CA) to another. The fees range anywhere between Rs.300 and Rs.2,500 for ITR1 and ITR2 depending on the complexity of return filing. So if you just have salaried income, e-filing really doesn't make sense.

If you don't have a digital signature, you can still file an e-return, but you have to submit a hard copy of the completed return to your tax office within 15 days after that.

Once the file is uploaded, the ITR-V form is generated and this is the proof of you having filed your return.

Without a digital signature, you need to print out two ITR-V forms. One has to be submitted to the tax office and the receiving clerk or officer will stamp and return the other one for your records.

This is where the entire process of filing a return online weakens. If a visit to the income tax department is necessary, then one might as well fill up the entire form manually.

Nevertheless, it does help in case of individuals who have bulky tax returns. "We save a lot of paper, while filing returns electronically. Earlier, for assessees whose TDS (tax deducted at source) was high, we had to take prints of at least 20-24 pages, sometimes even 100 pages.

But with the e-filing, only two copies of a one-page return are enough," says Sumanlal Lodaya, chartered accountant who runs SS Lodaya & Associates. There are other issues also with e-filing. "Sometimes you have to submit the returns three-four times for it to be accepted. In my area there is load-shedding for three-four working hours. So, though one can file returns post-working hours as well, in CA offices the staff is not available later on to file returns online," says Salva.

If one has to follow the Income Tax Act in its true letter and spirit, e-filing is a 'defective' way of filing returns. The explanation accompanying Section 139(9) of the Income Tax Act clearly states that any return that is not accompanied by annexures, TDS certificates, etc, is 'defective.' "Using this loophole in the Act, the taxman can insist on physical documents for verification after you have e-filed your return," says a CA who was unwilling to be named.

Given these reasons, it is best to physically file your income tax return rather than go the e-way.

Filing tax? Take your documents along

IT officers may ask for the same while filing.

Nearing July 31 and it is time to file the income tax return (ITR).

By this time, you may have received Form No 16 and be ready with your tax calculations in order to file the annual income tax return.

Even though the ITR forms have instructions, which clearly state that there is no need to submit any supporting document, it is in the interest of the assessee to carry the documents along.

DNA Money had earlier reported that income tax offices in Mumbai have not been accepting ITR forms unless these are accompanied by the relevant documents.

This is contrary to the existing regulations.

Instructions from the finance ministry state, "No document (including TDS certificate) should be attached to the form. Officials receiving the return have been instructed to detach all the documents enclosed with this form and return the same to the assessees.

This has been applicable in the assessment year 2007-08 and will now be applicable in the current assessment year of 2008-09 as well.

But, the tax officers are finding it difficult to process the information without the documents, especially tax deduction at source certificates.

It has been learnt that the IT department has been in touch with those who had filed returns last year without the supporting documents.

While going to file the ITR at the designated income tax office, make sure you have the TDS certificates, house rent receipts and investment proof for both the current financial year and previous ones ready at hand.

Those who have plans to discard old documents must make sure the old pile doesn't contain the TDS certificate on 2007 fixed deposits. Also, if you are planning not to collect the TDS certificate, education expense receipt, house rent receipts or agreement just because you no longer have to submit them, think again.

May be the tax officer in your city will accept the ITR forms without documents, but only to knock your door the next day. In effect, the IT department has shelved its burden of document storage on the tax assessee.

Good Lesson:

One of my colleagues recently lost his wallet while driving. He immediately called me up to check what needs to be done. I asked him to block his Debit and Credit Cards quickly and to request for the issue of new cards. He did the same without any delay. Also, I contacted ICICI Lombard to issue duplicate mediclaim card for him. And when he came to office, he applied for a duplicate PAN card by paying the appropriate fees online.

After 4 days, he got a call in the early morning from someone who claims to be the finder of his wallet. It seems that gentlemen tried to reach my colleague several times, but the latter did not pick those calls thinking that they were marketing calls from banks for loans / credit cards etc. This is because he has been getting annoying calls from various banks and hence, he doesn’t pick the calls from unknown numbers.

Though he got his wallet back, he ends up paying charges to all his bankers for issue of duplicate debit and credit cards, processing fees for duplicate PAN card, apart from facing mental stress and disturbances.

The lesson what we all can learn from this incident is that we should pick all incoming calls (for few days at least) if the wallet is lost. Who knows it might be from the finder of your wallet ?

The thing to note is that the gentleman who found my colleague’s wallet was ready to meet him and hand over it. How surprising it is that someone who finds your wallet tries many times to reach you, and when he gets you, he asks where should he come and hand it over ? In this fast-moving world with everyone having there own busy schedule of activities, it’s very difficult to find someone with helping tendency like this. Isn’t it ?? We should be like this, in case we find someone’s missing stuff.

Another thing, needless to say, is that the incoming marketing calls from banks are increasing day by day. The “Do Not Disturb” Registry is also not effective to a large extent. These marketing people simply say that they found our number on their data base and disturb us a lot. And that too, some times we get repeated calls from the same office and they are answerless if we question it. Quite painful !!

Few interesting facts:

The word budget's root word is the French word BOUGETTE, a little bag, once used for pills and medication.


Tight security: Almost 30 employees of the Finance Ministry press stay inside the ministry building for a week ahead of the Budget presentation. They're not allowed to communicate with the outside world. This is done to ensure that information from the Budget is not leaked out.


Morarji Desai was the only Indian Finance Minister to have presented two budgets on his birthday, February 29, in 1964 and 1968.


The world's first documented imprisonment for tax evasionwas in 306 A.D. by Emperor Constantine of the Holy Roman Empire.


The world's first income tax was levied in 1404 A.D. in England (it was so hated that Parliament later had all records of it burned).

A young man went overseas to study for quite a long time. When he returned, he asked his parents to find him a religious scholar or any expert who could answer his 3 Questions.

Finally, his parents were able to find a scholar.

Young man: Who are you? Can you answer my questions?

Scholar: I am one of God willing, I will be able to answer your questions.

Young man: Are you sure? A lot of Professors and experts were not able to answer my questions.

Scholar: I will try my best, with the help of God .

Young Man: I have 3 questions:

1. Does God exist? If so, show me his shape.

2. What is fate?

3. If Devil was created from the fire, why at the end he will be thrown to hell that is also created from fire. It certainly will not hurt him at all, since Devil and the hell were created from fire. Did God not think of it this far?

Suddenly, the Scholar slapped the young man's face very hard.

Young Man(feeling pain): Why do you get angry at me?

Scholar: I am not angry. The slap is my answer to your three questions.

Young Man: I really don't understand.

Scholar: How do you feel after I slapped you?

Young Man: Of course, I felt the pain.

Scholar: So do you believe that pain exists?

Young Man: Yes.

Scholar: Show me the shape of the pain!

Young Man: I cannot.

Scholar: That is my first answer. All of us feel God's existence without being able to see His shape... Last night, did you dream that you will be slapped by me?

Young Man: No.

Scholar: Did you ever think that you will get a slap from me, today?

Young Man: No.

Scholar: That is fate my second answer...... .. My hand that I used to slap you, what is it created from?

Young Man: It is created from flesh.

Scholar: How about your face, what is it created from?

Young Man: Flesh.

Scholar: How do you feel after I slapped you?

Young Man: In pain.

Scholar: That's it... This is my third answer, Even though Devil and also the hell were created from the fire, if God wants, the hell will become a very painful place for devil.

God said: "If you are ashamed of me, I will be Ashamed of you." If you are not ashamed, pass this message on...only if you believe.

Isn’t it smart ????

'A Leader Should Know How to Manage Failure'

(Former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam at Wharton India Economic forum, Philadelphia, March 22, 2008)

Question: Could you give an example, from your own experience, of how leaders should manage failure?

Kalam: Let me tell you about my experience. In 1973 I became the project director of India's satellite launch vehicle program, commonly called the SLV-3. Our goal was to put India's "Rohini" satellite into orbit by 1980. I was given funds and human resources -- but was told clearly that by 1980 we had to launch the satellite into space. Thousands of people worked together in scientific and technical teams towards that goal.

By 1979 -- I think the month was August -- we thought we were ready. As the project director, I went to the control center for the launch. At four minutes before the satellite launch, the computer began to go through the checklist of items that needed to be checked. One minute later, the computer program put the launch on hold; the display showed that some control components were not in order.

My experts -- I had four or five of them with me -- told me not to worry; they had done their calculations and there was enough reserve fuel. So I bypassed the computer, switched to manual mode, and launched the rocket. In the first stage, everything worked fine. In the second stage, a problem developed. Instead of the satellite going into orbit, the whole rocket system plunged into the Bay of Bengal. It was a big failure.

That day, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, Prof. Satish Dhawan, had called a press conference. The launch was at 7:00 am, and the press conference -- where journalists from around the world were present -- was at 7:45 am at ISRO's satellite launch range in Sriharikota [in Andhra Pradesh in southern India]. Prof. Dhawan, the leader of the organization, conducted the press conference himself.

He took responsibility for the failure -- he said that the team had worked very hard, but that it needed more technological support. He assured the media that in another year, the team would definitely succeed. Now, I was the project director, and it was my failure, but instead, he took responsibility for the failure as chairman of the organization.

The next year, in July 1980, we tried again to launch the satellite -- and this time we succeeded. The whole nation was jubilant. Again, there was a press conference. Prof. Dhawan called me aside and told me, "You conduct the press conference today."

I learned a very important lesson that day. When failure occurred, the leader of the organization owned that failure. When success came, he gave it to his team.

The best management lesson I have learned did not come to me from reading a book; it came from that experience.

Trip to Vellore:

I was invited for the marriage of one my ex-colleagues' brother, which was scheduled to be held in Vellore on 10th of Feb 2008. Since I wanted to attend the marriage and also to visit the Vellore Golden Temple , I decided along with other friends that we could make it.

After thorough and repeated checks, finally it was clear that me, Hari and Deena can go from Chennai. Sai and Raju directly from Bangalore. The plan was confirmed only on the previous day of marriage and hence, we didn’t have any choice except to take a bus to Vellore (in fact, the headcount was less otherwise we could have taken a cab).

We planned to be at Koyambedu Bus Station at 7 p.m. Thanks to the traffic condition in Chennai (being a ‘Muhurtham’ day), I was able to reach at 7.05, Deena at 8.00 and finally, Hari at 9.00. Good thing happened was that, since I didn’t want to waste my time waiting for friends, I got the book “The monk who sold his ferrari” from a book shop over there and was able to complete about 30 pages before Deena reached.

We took a bus to Vellore at about 9.10 p.m. We couldn’t get together-seats to sit. Also, we were jam-packed by passengers who surrounded us by standing, by sitting and by laying on the floor very next to us and scratching purposelessly. So, the journey was that ‘pleasant’ :-).

Reached Vellore at 12.30 and got an auto to reach the Hotel. Surprised to see that Sai was waiting to receive us. And, in fact he helped to wipe off our hungry by offering a biscuit packet which served as a dinner. We slept at about 2.30.

Since weekends are nightmares for visitors, we decided to visit the temple in the early morning itself. So, we got up at 4 a.m. and left at 4.30 a.m. to temple. But surprised to note that the temple gate opens only by 8 a.m. We waited till then enjoying the hilarious conversation with Sai.

To talk about temple, Wow, it is awesome. I could say that the founder “Sakthivel” has really done a wonderful thing which is highly impossible for a normal man. Tonnes and tonnes of shining Gold, amazing workmanship, highly decorated and neatly maintained gardens,,,, ooof, we should be proud to tell the world that we got something like this….marvelous… Everyone must visit this temple once in a life time.

We then attended the marriage. Met CEO of ‘Arusuvai.com’ Babu and few of his friends. We caught the bus at 2 p.m back to Chennai.

Quite a short and memorable trip…..

FACTS TO MAKE EVERY INDIAN PROUD:
----------------
Q. Who is the co-founder of Sun Microsystems?
A. Vinod Khosla
----------------
Q. Who is the creator of Pentium chip (needs no introduction as 90% of the today's computers run on it)?
A. Vinod Dahm
----------------
Q. Who is the third richest man on the world?
A. According to the latest report on Fortune Magazine, it is Lakshmi Mittal.
----------------
Q. Who is the founder and creator of Hotmail (Hotmail is world's No.1 web based email program)?
A. Sabeer Bhatia
----------------
Q. Who is the president of AT & T-Bell Labs (AT & T-Bell Labs is the creator of program languages such as C, C++, Unix to name a few)?
A. Arun Netravalli
----------------
Q. Who is the GM of Hewlett Packard?
A. Rajiv Gupta
----------------
Q. Who is the new MTD (Microsoft Testing Director) of Windows 2000, responsible to iron out all initial problems?
A. Sanjay Tejwrika
----------------
Q. Who are the Chief Executives of CitiBank, Mckensey & Stanchart?
A. Victor Menezes, Rajat Gupta, and Rana Talwar.
----------------
Q. We Indians are the wealthiest among all ethnic groups in America, even faring better than the whites and the natives.
There are 3.22 millions of Indians in USA (1.5% of population) . YET,
38% of doctors in USA are Indians.
12% scientists in USA are Indians.
36% of NASA scientists are Indians.
34% of Microsoft employees are Indians.
28% of IBM employees are Indians.
17% of INTEL scientists are Indians.
13% of XEROX employees are Indians.

----------------
Some of the following facts may be known to you. These facts were recently published in a German magazine, which deals with WORLD HISTORY FACTS ABOUT INDIA.

1. India never invaded any country in her last 1000 years of history.

2. India invented the Number system. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.

3. The world's first University was established in. M Takshila in 700BCore than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century BC was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.

4. According to the Forbes magazine, Sanskrit is the most suitable language for computer software.

5. Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans.

6. Although western media portray modern images of India as poverty striken and underdeveloped through political corruption, India was once the richest empire on earth.

7. The art of navigation was born in the river Sindh 5000 years ago. The very word "Navigation" is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH.

8. The value of pi was first calculated by Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is now known as the Pythagorean Theorem. British scholars have last year (1999) officially published that Budhayan's works dates to the 6 th Century which is long before the European mathematicians.

9. Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India. Quadratic equations were by Sridharacharya in the 11 th Century; the largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Indians used numbers as big as 10 53.

10. According to the Gemmological Institute of America, up until 1896, India was the only source of diamonds to the world.

11. USA based IEEE has proved what has been a century-old suspicion amongst academics that the pioneer of wireless communication was Professor Jagdeesh Bose and not Marconi.

12. The earliest reservoir and dam for irrigation was built in Saurashtra.

13. Chess was invented in India.

14. Sushruta is the father of surgery. 2600 years ago he and health scientists of his time conducted surgeries like cesareans, cataract, fractures and urinary stones. Usage of anaesthesia was well known in ancient India.

15. When many cultures in the world were only nomadic forest dwellers over 5000 years ago, Indians established Harappan culture in Sindhu Valley (Indus Valley Civilisation).

16. The place value system, the decimal system was developed in India in 100 BC.
----------------

Quotes about India:

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made - Albert Einstein.


India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and the great grand mother of tradition - Mark Twain.


If there is one place on the face of earth where all dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India - French scholar Romain Rolland.


India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border – Hu Shih (former Chinese ambassador to USA).

The 10 biggest falls in the Indian stock market history:

May 18, 2006: The Sensex registered a fall of 826 points (6.76 per cent) to close at 11,391, it's biggest ever, following heavy selling by FIIs, retail investors and a weakness in global markets.

April 28, 1992: The Sensex registered a fall of 570 points (12.77 per cent) to close at 3,870, it's second-largest, following the coming to light of the Harshad Mehta securities scam.

May 17, 2004: Another Monday. Sensex dropped by 565 points, its third biggest fall ever, to close at 4,505. With the NDA out of power and the Left parties, part of the UPA coalition government, flexing their muscle, the Sensex witnessed its second-biggest intra-day fall of 842 points, twice attracting suspension of trading. At close, however, it regained some of its lost ground.

May 15, 2006: The market fell by 463 points to 11,822 points.

May 22, 2006: Sensex slumped by 457 points to 10,482.

May 19, 2006: Sensex slumped by 453 points to 10,939.

April 4, 2000: Sensex slumped by 361 points to 4,691.

May 12, 1992: Indian stock markets plunged 334 points to fall to 3,086.

May 14, 2004: Sensex lost 330 points to fall to 5,070.

May 6, 1992: Losing 327 points, the Sensex fell to 3,561 points

Came across this news through my friend and as usual, just thought of sharing with you.

ESOPs benefits not taxable at source: SC

The Supreme Court has ruled that the benefit given to the staff of a company under the employees' stock option scheme cannot be considered as taxable income and the company was not obliged to deduct tax at source.

The court thus dismissed the appeal of the Commissioner of Income Tax, Bangalore against the judgment of the Karnataka high court which had ruled in favour of Infosys Technologies.

The company had created Technologies Employees Welfare Trust and allotted 7.5 lakh (750,000) warrants at Rs 1 each. Such warrants could be used after a five-year lock-in period to obtain shares. The plan was floated because of buy-back problems where employees left their jobs for one reason or the other. The stock exchange was informed that the shares were non-transferable.

The tax authorities, however, determined that the total amount paid by the employees while exercising their option was Rs 6.64 crore (Rs 66.4 million) whereas the market value of those shares was Rs 171 crore (Rs 1.71 billion). The difference was treated as 'perquisite value' on which TDS was charged at 30 per cent.

The company was treated as a defaulter for not deducting the perquisite value of Rs 165 crore (Rs 1.65 billion). The tax tribunal and the high court, however, held in favour of Infosys [Get Quote] when it moved the courts.

Dismissing the appeal of the tax authorities, the Supreme Court bench headed by Justice S H Kapadia ruled that the company was not bound to deduct tax on the amount earned by its employees from exercise of stock option granted to them through the trust.

"Warrant is a right without obligation to buy. Therefore, perquisite cannot be said to accrue at the time when the warrants were granted," the judgment explained.
The employee could resign, and there was no certainty that his option would be exercised after the lock-in period. "The benefit if any which arose on the date when the option stood exercised was only a notional benefit whose value was unascertainable."

The change in law introduced in the Finance Act in 2000 was not retrospective, the court asserted. The benefit was prospective and unless a benefit was in the nature of income it was not taxable. There was no legislative support to consider the benefit given in this case to the employees as income chargeable under the head 'salaries', the judgment concluded.

Bill Gates says:

"People are often curious about which applications and technology I use, and if there are features in the new version of Office that have changed the way I work. Without a doubt, Office 2007 enables me to get my work done more easily and quickly than before.

If you visit my office, you will probably notice right away that I have three large flat screen displays that sit together and are synchronized so they work like a single very wide display. The large display area enables me to work very efficiently. I keep my Outlook 2007 Inbox open on the screen to the left so I can see new messages as they come in. I usually have the message or document that I'm currently reading or writing in the center screen. The screen on the right is where I have room to open up a browser or look at a document that someone has sent me in e-mail.

I spend the majority of my time communicating with colleagues, customers, and partners. As a result, Outlook is the application that I use the most. I receive about 100 e-mail messages per day from Microsoft employees, and many more from customers and partners.

It's very important that I hear what people think about our products and our company. Yet I need to balance that against the very real risk of information overload from all the e-mail that I receive. The advances we made in Outlook 2007 for filtering, rules, and search folders have made it much easier to manage my e-mail than before, especially because so much happens automatically once I've set everything up.

A great thing is that all my voice mail, faxes, and even instant messages are sent to my Outlook Inbox using our unified communications technology. Another important feature of unified communications that we have integrated into Office applications is presence and identity. That means I can always tell at a glance whether the person I need to get in touch with is available or not.

One change to Outlook that I appreciate is tasks are now integrated with how I view my calendar. Before Office 2007, I never used the Outlook task feature, but now that tasks are automatically added to my calendar, it makes it much easier to stay on top of the important things I need to do.

Working with other people efficiently and effectively is more important than ever, not just for Microsoft but for any organization. I find that SharePoint, a software program that enables people to easily create internal Web sites so they can collaborate on projects, has become indispensable.

For example, each year I do something called ThinkWeek where anybody in the company can submit a paper about an idea they have to change the way our company works or to pursue a new development project. We used to rely primarily on printed documents, but now it's simple for us to create a Web site to manage the entire process. This year, more than 350 papers were submitted. Not only did I read and comment on many of them, but other technical leaders from across the company were able to go up to the ThinkWeek Web site and add their thoughts. This has led to many lively discussions and started numerous new projects, something that was much harder to do when everything was on paper.

This release of SharePoint also has many social networking features that I find enormously helpful. In addition to searching any corporate intranet site for documents, SharePoint now enables me to search for specific people based on their expertise, job title, or the department they work in. Also, employees can easily create personal Web sites where they can post photos and list their experiences and interests. SharePoint even automatically associates every document with its author, and explains his relationship to other employees on the same team and in his department. So SharePoint makes it far easier to quickly identify the two or three people who are experts in parallel computing, for example, even though there are more than 80,000 employees at Microsoft now.

Of course, collaborating often means meeting with my colleagues in person or remotely over the Internet via Office LiveMeeting. I always take a lot of notes about ideas to think about or things to follow up on. I try to bring my Tablet PC to meetings as often as possible so that I can use OneNote 2007 to write notes in ink that can later be searched or converted to text. Even if I forget my Tablet, I can scan a document or piece of paper and add that image to OneNote. One of the nice new features in OneNote 2007 is that it automatically recognizes the text in those scanned documents, so that it's easy to search for them later.

Then there are times when I really want to drill down into an industry or market trend. The new business intelligence and data visualization tools in Excel 2007 and SharePoint are fantastic for accessing the kind of data that used to be hard to find because it was stored in back-end databases, and then dig through that data to gain some real insights into what is going on. Now I can easily take a look at how a change to something like our assumptions about customer demand might affect the market for a certain product.

Taken together, the improvements in Office 2007 have certainly had a large impact on the way I work. I seem to discover a new feature or a better way of doing something almost every day, and I am hopeful that many of you will find the new Office to be as useful as I do".

About the author

William (Bill) H. Gates is chairman of Microsoft Corporation, the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

On June 15, 2006, Microsoft announced that effective July 2008, Gates will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. After July 2008 Gates will continue to serve as Microsoft’s chairman and an advisor on key development projects.

Under Gates' leadership, Microsoft's mission has been to continually advance and improve software technology, and to make it easier, more cost-effective and more enjoyable for people to use computers. The company is committed to a long-term view, reflected in its investment of approximately $7.1 billion on research and development in the 2007 fiscal year.

I came across this article and thought that I should share it with you…….It’s about the mistakes that the employees of Microsoft commit…….


Even Microsoft employees are not immune from the everyday pitfalls and mistakes that everyone is bound to make at work. Read Philip Su's hilarious take on how some of us Office "experts" make the same mistakes our customers do ... over and over again.

A question I frequently get from all my readers (yes, both of you!) is, "What's it like working at Microsoft?" Most people imagine that life at The Big One must be like working in a Geekalicious Nirvana. Everyone wears 3D goggles ("It's a Unix system! I know this!") and goes by handles like Crash Override and Acid Burn. Specifications are written in I33t. DeLoreans equipped with Mr. Fusions are the cars of choice. That sort of thing.

When I tell strangers that I work at Microsoft, I see the gears turning in their heads as they contemplate their next question. Inevitably, they ask one of the following:

"Have you been in Bill's house?" Usually, it's the 12-year-old in the bunch that asks this. No, I have not, but I have been on his lawn. Yes, all interns were invited; no, I did not talk with him; yes, I gorged myself on free food. None of this is half is interesting to the stranger, however, as the story of the intern who was forced out of Bill's house in handcuffs after running in during a "bathroom break" to make a phone call to his mom. "Hi mom! You'll never guess where I'm at right...ow! OUCH!" But I digress.

"Wow — can I drive your Ferrari?" This is a perennial favorite with the provisional driver's license crowd. They quickly lose interest once I fondly mention my '98 Honda Accord (V6! Too fast! Too furious!).

"Hey, my Outlook's not working…" "I don't understand the thing in Excel where you [verb] the [noun] with your [relative/neighbor] using [ctrl/alt/shift][F7/Enter/NumLock]..." It's a veritable MadLib of questions of the pattern, "In [Microsoft product of choice], how do I [some important thing that should be easy to do but isn't at all obvious]?"

The last type of question is by far the most common, especially with the airport crowd. But these strangers base their questions on a critically-flawed premise: They assume that Microsoft employees actually know how to use Microsoft products.

So without further ado, and to show you that we struggle with technology just like everyone else, here are the Top 7 Microsoft Employee Bungles using Microsoft Office that I've witnessed.

Top 7 employee bungles using Office

1. Opening dangerous attachments. Viruses like Melissa ("I love you!") were a huge problem at Microsoft. The kicker about it is that everyone acted flabbergasted and incredulous. "What sort of idiot clicks on these things?!" It's like Hootie and the Blowfish: the best-selling debut album of all time has no fans. Have you ever met a single person who admitted to owning Cracked Rear View? Same with Melissa.

2. Forgetting to include attachments. This is the evil twin of #1: in addition to clicking on harmful attachments, we forget to include useful attachments. So when you see an email with the subject "Foolproof Plan for World Peace — Part Deux," don't get too excited. As awesome as the plan probably is, it's almost definitely not attached to the email.

3. Replying-all to huge mailing lists. Any email to a large alias inevitably results in someone (no doubt a proud Hootie CD owner) replying to everyone. The threads are always the same. Something rather mundane or obscure is sent to thousands of people. Then the fan mail starts pouring in:
 "Why am I on this list?"
 "Unsubscribe."
 "Please also remove me!"
 "Please stop replying to everyone — there are thousands of people on this alias."
 "Me too!"
 "SERIOUSLY — STOP REPLYING ALL!"
 "Why are you shouting?"
 "We never talk anymore."

The most famous of these threads at Microsoft started on a mysterious distribution list called "Bedlam DL3." 25,000 employees, 15.5 million e-mails, 195 GB of bandwidth, busted network. T-shirts were printed to commemorate the event.

4. Putting aliases in the "To:" field in order to see who's in them. To see names on an alias, you can put the alias in the "To:" field of an email and double-click it ... if you're a complete idiot. A friend of mine ("Jimmy") almost got fired by an executive for doing this. A product that this executive was in charge of was getting cancelled, but her team didn't yet know it. When Jimmy heard the scoop, he wrote his boss an e-mail that essentially said, "Hey there, so-and-so's team is getting canned. Here are the only three people worth keeping..." He then proceeded to add so-and-so's entire team to the "To:" line in order to find out the names of the "only three people worth keeping." The rest of what happened is left as an exercise to the reader.

5. Projecting a PowerPoint presentation. The amount of time wasted at Microsoft sitting in conference rooms waiting for the presenter to get the slides to work is mind-boggling. Does the projector handle your resolution? Press Fn-F5! Click the little icon in the lower left to resume your slide show. Not that icon! The other one! Oh, the screen saver's kicked in. Your laptop's suspending!

6. Getting instant messages (IMs) during presentations. Once the presentation is going, IM notifications inevitably pop up on the screen. This tends to happen most when you're presenting in front of hundreds of people. "Yo! How did the [blind-date/colonoscopy/armed-robbery] go?" "Hi, [term of endearment]! I can't wait to [verb] your [adjective][noun] [now/tonight/again/forever]!" I'm told that the latest version of Office fixes this. Let's hope so.

NOTE From the Editor: In 2007 Office system, Desktop Alerts for incoming e-mail messages are turned off by default when you run a PowerPoint 2007 presentation. See Turn Desktop Alerts on or off for more info.

7. Using Excel to cover up Unreal Tournament. Well, I've only seen this once, but it's so eponymous that it deserves to be celebrated. A few years ago, one of my team members frantically maximized Excel as I walked into his office. As I began discussing a technical issue with him, sounds of gunfire, grenades, and general human suffering erupted from his speakers. I had a difficult decision to make while recovering from my brief initial confusion: Do I acknowledge what was already mutually embarrassing and awkward, or do I ignore the obvious? I decided to conduct our technical discussion with the idyllic calm of a wartime correspondent. To his credit, I now know that should push come to shove, my team member could calmly discuss a spec during Armageddon without batting an eyelash.

As you can see, Microsoft employees are often just as befuddled as everyone else. It would blow your mind if you could hear how frequently basic Office tips are shared in my hallway at work. Spend a day here, and you'll find it impossible to believe that we're all Office mavens marching lockstep towards a streamlined plan for world dominion.

Then again, Office 2007 is far easier to use. I'm impressed by the many improvements in its user interface. So in a funny way, perhaps we're no longer as harmless as we used to be. World dominion may be within our grasp after all. If we could only remember to attach our plan in email…

About the author

Philip Su is a development manager in Microsoft Search. He has also been a developer in Office, MSN, and Windows. In his copious free time, Philip co-authored Building Tablet PC Applications, taught classes at the University of Washington, and managed to almost get fired twice. For more random wackiness about Philip, see his annually-updated blog.

Marriage of ex-collegue on 25th Nov 2007 at Guruvayoor:

One of our ex-collegues - Santhosh invited us for his wedding which happened last week in Guruvayoor Temple.

Me, Hari joined them in Chennai Central Station to Thrissur.

Sai and Deena came from Bangalore and got us in Thissur.

Nakul came from Madurai.

Kannan Devendran came from Trivandrum.

We went to Chotanikarai Bagavathy Amman Temple on Saturday, the 24th Nov.
ON 25th, after attending the marriage, we had a good dharshan of Lord Krishna in Guruvayoor. Did shopping and bought many stuffs.

It was a fun-filling trip and we all enjoyed to the maximum core. Hope to have a trip like this again quite soon.

Few photographs:

History of Accounting:

Bookkeeping and record-keeping methods, created in response to the development of trade and commerce, are preserved from ancient and medieval sources. Double-entry bookkeeping began in the commercial city-states of medieval Italy and was well developed by the time of the earliest preserved double-entry books, from 1340 in Genoa.


The first published accounting work was written in 1494 by the Venetian monk Luca Pacioli. Although it disseminated rather than created knowledge about double-entry bookkeeping, Pacioli's work summarized principles that have remained essentially unchanged. Additional accounting works were published during the 16th century in Italian, German, Dutch, French, and English, and these works included early formulations of the concepts of assets, liabilities, and income.


The Industrial Revolution of the mid-1700s created a need for accounting techniques that would be adequate to handle mechanization, factory-manufacturing operations, and the mass production of goods and services. With the emergence in the mid-19th century of large, publicly owned business corporations, owned by absentee stockholders and administered by professional managers, the role of accounting was further redefined.


Starting in the mid-20th century, machines—particularly computers—performed many of the bookkeeping functions that are vital to accounting systems. The widespread use of computers broadened the scope of bookkeeping, and the term data processing now frequently encompasses bookkeeping.

Alert on Tax Saving Efforts:

The Govt. of India has signed a contract with IBM for Rs.205 crores to create database of 375 lakhs income tax assessees based in Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad. IBM was to start this work from Sep 2007.

Further, this year Income Tax dept has not been accepting TDS certificates, donation receipts etc. along with income tax returns. This tends to believe that Indian Income tax dept is coming in position to cross verify all your claims electronically.

An assessee can be issued notice of scrutiny for a period of 6 yrs. If you can't satisfy your ITO about genuineness of your return or payment of taxes, you could be asked to pay addl. tax with interest and the IT dept is empowered to levy 300% penalty.

One needs to engage efficient CA to attend scrutiny. An efficient CA may charge Rs.2,000/= or more per hour for time he devotes for visits to Income tax office and the time he spends in his office for preparation of replies. The CA's bill may come for more than Rs.25,000/=.

This year and last year income tax dept has issued plenty of notices to small income assessees whose capital is big.

Normally, the ITO gives tension to assessees. During scrutiny, he can ask for your passbooks and can verify correctness of your claims and in the process may come across various other issues.

Saving Rs.1,00,000/= in tax is no wise decision looking to the gravity and contract to IBM for creating database.

Are we really comfortable with the Government authorities?

Just thought of sharing couple of my incidents happened recently with Government officials……

As we all very much know, most of the Govt officials who interact with public do NOT themselves know the procedures to be followed and very importantly, details relating to latest developments like on-line returns, forms downloading from web sites, change in formats of forms / challans etc.

Recently, for making one of the high value payments to “Ministry of Corporate Affairs”, I faced lot of troubles and notably, nobody was able to help me.

It’s some thing like this, when we file our return for this purpose on-line, it auto-generates a challan with pre-filled details. We’ll have to print this and submit to any one of the authorized bank branches along with a cheque / DD for the applicable fee within 3 days, (will be invalid otherwise).

Problems faced:

a) The link on their website for knowing the authorized bank branches was / is not working.
b) When we enquired with the MCA office, no body knew the answer.
c) I checked up with various consultants whom I know, but they are also not sure about this but got me a list of banks, which ‘might’ accept this payment.
d) Sent my admin assistant to these banks and invariably, every bank was unable to accept this payment quoting their own idiotic reasons (all b’coz that they were not clearly instructed by the Govt officials)

i) Some says they are not authorized to accept (in spite of the fact that MCA says they are one of the authorized branches),
ii) Some says cheques are not allowed – only DDs or cash deposits are allowed (the other joint authorized signatory was in London and being high value payment cash deposit was also not possible)
iii) Some says that the cheque has to be drawn in a different name (but the form which was generated by the MCA site clearly indicates a different name, and I strictly followed that thinking that the bankers would create problems otherwise)

e) Then I checked up with another consultant in Chennai. He says that he used to make these payments in ICICI, Nungambakkam Branch. Then, I had no solution except to send the stuff to my ex-admin manager and requested him to submit it immediately since that was the last day. Though he was in hectic work schedule, was able to help me.

Another incident was / is regarding the remittance of service tax. (Need to write a separate blog about the levy of service tax, hence let me talk here only the fuss I faced in remitting the same).

I think that Service Tax authorities spend their most of the time in changing the formats of forms, challans etc very often. To our surprise, every time we remit the monies, there is a change in format with a strict instruction to all banks that old formats should not be accepted. For which, they should also let public know the new format. But what we usually hear is “Format is changed now, but we are not sure about the new one”.

When I remitted this time in Chennai in a format (which itself is a recently changed one and downloaded from the web site of Service Tax), the counter girl said “format is changed and you could try Income Tax Office for the new form”. I told that this is the downloaded form, but she said they are instructed not to accept a different format.

Then I went to Income Tax Dept and checked up about this… “Chanceless, we haven’t changed the format and also, we don’t sell forms”…. Yes, this is what I heard from the superintendent there. Since talking to him will of absolutely no use to me, I went to a law book selling shop and bought those forms whatever they had then and went back again to bank (which took about an hour in this traffic, also that it was raining).

This form insists for more details with a note that these details can be accessed to their web site. Then I called up my colleague to check the website and let me know these details. He called me back in few minutes and told these are not available on this site. I just filled up the form with whatever details I had and submitted to the bank, by clearly freezing my mind that when the concerned officials come back to me for any missing information, I’ll show who I am.

What I’m trying to say here is that taking a corporate decision for any statutory obligation is not so simple. We need to talk to various people like auditors, company secretaries, tax authorities, internal management guys at various hierarchies. After these are done, payment of concerned fees / amount is the last stage which completes the transaction and is supposed to be simple. But the situation is that we face more trouble in remitting the monies to Govt. than deciding the whole objective. Ironically, if the payment is not made on time, our Govt authorities are very perfect in threatening the corporates with penalty, interest, imprisonment etc.

“wat ? wat ? I can’t hear you clearly… “Seeking the help of Information Officer………”

Ha ha, good joke………we are in India man. What we expect from Govt Officials is to do some basic stuff, which they are supposed to do, for which seeking the help of an officer is something senseless effort. Anyway, would like to know whether any one has got justice through Information Officer anywhere in India.

Code of Bank's commitment to Customers

Many of us might be interested to know what exactly is the code of bank's commitment to customers............

For those who are looking for the answer and also about various rules and regulations about banking in India, here's the link........

Click here

Yesterday, the 17th day of July 2007, was a memorable day for about 20 employees in Cricinfo (which includes me too).

We were all awarded for "Long Term Achievement".

Those who had completed 4 yrs and 6 yrs of service were complemented with Tropy; and 4 & 6 gms of Gold Coin respectively (and of course, respectfully :-).

Investing in Mutual Funds ? - Impossible without Income Tax Permanent Account Number:

Till July 1,2007, only those people who invested in Mutual Funds for amounts more than Rs. 50,000 were needed to quote their IT PAN on the application. To avoid quoting this number and to be on a safer side, our people were wisely splitting the investments in to various parts either in their names or in the names of their relatives.

But, how long the Govt will sleep ?

Quoting IT PAN has been made mandatory by SEBI with effect from 2nd July 2007 for Capital markets and Mutual Fund investments irrespective of the amount of investment.

So, whether the investment is in your name or other's name, it doesn't matter anymore.

Photocopy of the PAN Card of the applicant has to be attached along with the application, without which it can't be processed.

It means that, if you want to invest but don't have PAN, you can do so only after applying for PAN. Of course, photocopy of acknowledged PAN application can be attached alongwith the investment application till the time you are allotted the number.

There was lot of action in the stock markets yesterday with a volatile swing on selling and buying activities and the sensex closed with a moderate gain of 13 points.

There was buying in Capital Goods stocks.

BHEL extended its gain for the second consecutive day.

Oil company stocks also rose for the second day.

Banking stocks ended lower and other Indices closed flat or lower.

The rupee shed 0.6 paise against the Dollar.

The crude settled at $68/bbl.

The markets are expected to remain volatile in the next few days ahead of the expiry of Futures & Derivatives contract for the current month.

Market update:

The markets closed on a positive note on monday at 14,487 with a gain of 20 points over the previous close on the back of roll over of derivatives position, amid weak Global cues.

The markets were pushed up by index weight scrips like ONGC & BHARTI AIRTEL. There was also support from Capital goods heavy weights L&T & BHEL.

Oil stocks were on the limelight and closed higher.

BEML's FPO price was fixed at 1020-1090. Midcap stocks ended higher and the midcap index closed at a new high.

Banking and technology stocks however closed on a negative territory.

The rupee came under pressure and closed as 40.88 to a Dollar due to monthend purchase by the importers and the oil marketing companies.

The crude was traded around $68/bbl.

Sivaji - cool or fool ?

Had a chance to watch this movie with about 20 colleagues in Urvashi Theatre (Bangalore) - and like everyone, with high expectations.

Pluses: Rajni, Rajni and Rajni
Minuses: rest all........ (except Music and art)

I feel that -

a) the flow of scenes are not good,

b) some of the scenes are unbelievably exaggerated,

c) Rajni has not done certain scenes well which he could have done better,

d) Shankar's punch is present only on scenes referred in point b above

One good news for Rajni fans about this movis is that his styles are awesome and available throughout the movie which entertains everyone....

He uses the word 'Cooool' very often in the movie, but for those who are ditched, it sounds like 'Fooool' :-)

The market opened higher and hit an Intra day high of 14283 mirroring a firm trend in Asian markets.

Nevertheless, the market dropped 83 points at the close and ended at 14080.34 on concerns that FII may pare their holdings following a circular from CBDT differentiating between trading and investment stocks for taxation purpose.

All the Indices closed negative except bankex.

The rupee surged ahead and closed as 40.78 /$

Additional News: The IPO of ICICI Bank opens today with a price band of Rs.885-950.

Subject: ESPN acquires Cricinfo effective from June 8, 2007

The Wisden Group has agreed to sell Cricinfo to ESPN, one of the world's leading multimedia providers of sports content and entertainment.

Cricinfo and ESPN have worked together for a number of years so there is an existing relationship between the two businesses.

They are delighted to be acquiring Cricinfo, as their existing, highly regarded online sports portfolio does not include a dedicated cricket site.

Cricinfo has developed and flourished over the last three or four years and we are a strong and successful business.

The Wisden Group board has decided to sell now because they believe that Cricinfo will flourish in an environment dedicated to sports broadcasting and entertainment.

Also that Cricinfo can be an important element of ESPN's international development and sees fantastic benefits for Cricinfo in terms of content as well as in terms of expertise and experience in our core business.

ESPN is a multinational business with offices around the world, but for the immediate future Cricinfo offices will continue to operate normally and there will be no changes to the day-to-day running of the business.

Launch of NFO "Reliance Equity Advantage Fund- An open-ended Diversified Equity Scheme "

NFO dates
Opens on: 12th June 07
Closes on: 10th July 07A brief on the product...

Sector weightage of Reliance Equity Advantage Fund will mirror exactly that of Nifty on a
Monthly basis.

80% of stocks within each sector will be constituents of Nifty, though not necessarily with their Nifty weights

20% of stocks can be non-Nifty in each sector to provide the additional Alpha possibilities and opportunities

Flexibility of going short exists, but on a net basis sector weightages will be maintained in line with Nifty