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Below the Quote on Post Budget by Shantanu Bhargava, Managing Director, Head of Discretionary Investment Services, Waterfield Advisors

"Further tax simplification introduced in this year’s union budget further levels the playing field for other asset classes such as unlisted shares, gold, international equity/debt FoF, and real estate. We continue to believe that portfolios should be tax-informed, not tax-driven, and the finance minister's action is a positive step in that direction. At the industry level, we have observed that in the last 15 months, a large swathe of investors has made tax-driven portfolio allocations, in which they have allocated to riskier products due to changes in taxation of vanilla debt mutual funds, possibly, without carefully assessing and understanding the risks (market/credit) they have assumed in their portfolios by including such riskier products. Everything is fine in moderation, and we are confident that innovative products have a role to play in well-diversified portfolios; however, we continue to believe that portfolios should be tax informed, not tax driven.

The government has clearly been walking on the path to simplify the income tax system for some time, and the finance minister has made significant progress in this regard in this budget. The capital gains tax structure has been simplified, the dreaded angel tax has been eliminated, and there is a simplification of the withholding tax.

Given the weaker political mandate, there was widespread anticipation that the government would bite the populism bullet in this budget for pragmatic political reasons. However, the administration maintains the resolve seen in the interim budget, demonstrating impressive restraint by prioritizing fiscal prudence and broad policy continuity in areas such as capex and supply-side capacity creation." 

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