Imagine this view from the balcony, cool breeze, a cup of hot tea and corn on the cob :) A perfect adieu to the Sunday sun and a nice way of getting recharged for the week ahead ... 

Long time ....

Its been a long long time since I left blogging for no reason at all and suddenly I feel I should get back to blogging ways. Life has changed in these three years .. and I must say .. for good. Lots to write about. GIMP, Android, Photography, Music, etc etc. :) Stay tuned ..

KritiKal shining..

The year has been great for our sister firm, KritiKal SecureScan, which is making news everywhere.

In February we won the NASSCOM Innovation award for the year 2008 (related news here). It was a moment of pride for the entire team of VehiScan as well as for the KritiKal family. I have spent more than two years on this product so it was a special feeling for me to be awarded for my efforts.

Then CNBC TV 18 covered our company in their series "Young Turks Innovators" which was our first media coverage on television. (Youtube video). The video shooting team of CNBC was at our site in IIT and also came to our office in Noida. It was in fact funny the way they were shooting the entire video but when I saw the video I was highly impressed by those people.

And today there is an article on rediff.com. (click here)

KritiKal rocks !!

Income Tax benefits of EMI on houses under construction

Let me first explain the scenario before actually getting into the details of the procedure. You have bought a house. You took home loan for that and every month you pay an EMI towards repayment of that loan. The house is still under construction so you do not have the possession letter for that house. In your EMI, there are two components - Interest and Principal. In the early stages of repayment, the interest part is huge and the principal part is very less. You can avail tax benefits on both the components separately. There is an upper cap of 1 lacs for the principal component and another slab of 1.5 lacs for the interest component. The catch is that for the interest component, you need to have the possession of the house before you could avail any benefit on the interest paid.

Now the problem statement: How do we get the benefit on this huge amount of interest that we are paying every year when we do not have the possession of the house.

Solution 1: WAIT till you get the possession of the house. Suppose you started your EMIs in August, 2008 and you get the possession of the house in January, 2012. That means for the year 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 you could not avail any tax benefit on the interest component while in 2012 you would get a benefit on a maximum of 1.5 lac towards interest of your EMI.

Do this:

Add the interest paid by you all these years, i.e. Interest in 2008 + Interest in 2009 + Interest in 2010 + Interest in 2011.
Say the total Interest comes to I
Now divide this into 5 equal parts -> I/5 = I_part

According to the rule books, you can avail income tax benefit on this whole amount of I_part for 5 consecutive years since the year of possession, over and above the 1.5 lac slab for your interest component for the current financial year.

Hence in year 2012, you get full benefit on I_part + benefit on a maximum of 1.5 lacs for the interest paid in 2012.

And the same continues for the year 2013,2014,2015,2016

Solution 2: Consult a lawyer. Usually the CAs do not allow anyone to avail any benefit on the interest part without having the possession of the house. They do so because they are not supposed to break or even bend the rules that have been set by our government. In such a case, the lawyers have a different opinion. They say that when you are paying so heavily without even having the possession of the house, then why should you not get the benefit. (it actually makes sense too) The rule needs to be modified. And they have their own legal ways in which they get the refunds for you while filing your IT returns for that financial calendar. You just have to provide them your Form 16 and the total interest you have paid (and other related documents and stats as asked by the lawyers).

The first solution is obviously better since you get the benefit on the entire amount instead of a cap of 1.5 lacs. But it takes time. So if you are under a financial crunch, get a lawyer to file your IT returns rather than your accountant doing so for you. The lawyer will obviously charge you for that, but then he is also on a job, no social work :P

I opted to wait :)

The Smiling Moon

I was in IIT Delhi on 1st December evening preparing for a very important demo scheduled for the next day. And as I looked up in the sky to see how dark it had already become before 6, I noticed this awesome event, a gesture by the mother nature. The moon had a very thin crescent and just above it were two planets (Jupiter and Venus) at two corners of the crescent. The three heavenly bodies made a figure which we call a "smiley" :). I loved the view and wanted to reach home as soon as possible so that I could capture this moment forever. Unfortunately, till the time I reached home, the sky was already filled with fog and the trio was nowhere to be seen. I was very disappointed.

Today when I came home, the crescent of the moon had grown in these two days and the planets were still visible. Only the planets were lying somewhere else and the moon was stationed somewhere else. Suddenly an idea struck me. I thought of taking the pictures of both the planets and the moon and then aligning them in GIMP to get a picture similar to the smiling moon which happened just a couple of days ago. And I did exactly that :) Captured the moon and the planets with the same camera settings and then placed everything (had to scale down the planets photo) to get what I was desperate to capture since the time I witnessed it. Wallaah !! I did it :) Though, it would be termed fake and I would have to live with it :(, yet I have the satisfaction that by hook or by crook, I did make the moon smile once again.

Yellow dew

For more photographs: http://www.flickr.com/photos/abeerarts/