A decidedly mixed bag

Last year, when I was writing this page on the evening of budget day, I was a little worried that there was nothing much to say. Then, reflecting upon this, I realised that if I don't have anything much to say then that's a good thing, more or less. Since my remit is mostly investment and taxation, nothing to say means no changes and that's mostly fine. This year, there's much to say. The biggest (negative) surprise is that the concept of cost indexation in capital gains tax has been eliminated. A few years ago, the then finance minister Arun Jaitley had reintroduced long term capital gains tax on equity investments, and that too without indexation. At that time, I had written that the minister had made "this tax deeply unfair by not allowing inflation indexation. Inflation indexation is allowed for every other form of long-term capital gains in I