July 2023 Newsletter

Tax Filing – Due date is July 31^st

There is a theoretical belief that you don’t need to file your taxes if your income is within 3 lacs for AY 23-24. It’s practically wise to file taxes every year to be extremely clear on your income. It helps in at least 2 ways. First of all, you might be eligible to get back the TDS money deducted by your banks while depositing interest / dividend money and secondly it helps you when you want to purchase/sell a property in India. Also, it’s a good checkpoint that all your records are up to date. So, file your taxes before July 31^st.   

Mining in India:

$25 billion worth of Mineral Production happens in India. A whooping 75% of it comes from Coal and Iron. All of it is handled by a handful of companies - Tata Steel, Coal India, SAIL , NMDC and Vedanta. This is an extremely high barrier of entry industry. The growth in the industry is less by expanding India’s mining reserves and more by importing raw materials and processing them. Also the Sustainability goals have impacted the mining industry negatively putting pressure on margins. It’s best to have some exposure to these companies via their Corporate Bond issuance.

Investing in Depository Receipts:

Depository Receipts provide options for NRI’s to invest in Indian stocks directly in their home country brokerage accounts – plain and simple. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of them available in the US and UK markets. Banking stocks are my favorites among these but most of these names tend to be highly liquid and strong fundamental stocks trading at on-par or premium valuations. These are easiest way to get exposure to Indian markets by sitting in your home country.

Closing of Bank Accounts:

All you need is 1 good NRO/NRE account to manage all of your money back in India. You might have opened multiple accounts when you stayed in India but its time to close all of them. Its risky if you are not using an account as someone can misuse it and also if KYC is not updated then that account could get into compliance hurdles. We can help you with closing your dormant accounts. Send e-mail to enquiry.beyondsyllabus@gmail.com

Key Personal finance term – Wash Sale:

A wash sale is when you sell an investment and then turn around and repurchase the asset or one similar to it, often at a similar price. Basically, it’s there to prevent folks from booking losses and get tax credit without changing their composition. It’s more prevalent in US and similar rule exists in UK and Euro region but not in India.