Credit card debt

KEY TAKEAWAYS The U.S. savings rate has plunged, and 401(k) accounts have declined as loans and hardship withdrawals exacerbate market losses. With interest rates rising, consumers appear less likely to borrow money in 2023. As a result, the recent decline in consumer spending may persist. Last year, the highest U.S. inflation in 40 years had an entirely unsurprising effect: shrinking the amount of cash in Americans' pockets—and portending challenges for consumer spending in 2023. From tapping their savings to dipping into their retirement accounts, Americans increasingly scrambled for money as the cost of living soared and the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes, designed to lower inflation, raised borrowing costs. Nearly half of Americans said they have less savings than they did a year ago, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll. As cash savings fell, so did retirement accounts: The number of 401(k) retirement participants taking out loans from their … [Read more...] about Cash-Strapped Americans Increasingly Tap Savings, Retirement Accounts

Budget 2023 proposes to sharply increase the tax collected at source rate on money sent overseas under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme to 20 percent from 5 percent. To understand how this will impact you, let us first understand the concept of LRS and TCS. The Reserve Bank of India introduced the LRS in February 2004 to allow Indians to send money outside the country easily. The maximum amount that can be remitted under the scheme has been revised periodically, based on the prevailing macro- and microeconomic conditions: Under the scheme, currently, one can remit up to $250,000 per family member (including minors) in each financial year. So a family of four can remit up to $1 million in a financial year. Money can be remitted overseas for expenses such as: Travel for tourism, business, or employment Education Medical treatment Maintenance of a relative Gifts or donations Remittances are also allowed for capital account transactions like: Opening … [Read more...] about Tax collected at source on foreign remittances: One step forward, two steps back

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin This segment of What’s Ahead lays out how, with the right plan, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his fellow Republicans can turn the tables in their fight with President Biden over raising the ceiling of the national debt, thereby helping the country economically and the GOP politically. Steps include not spending the $250 billion in unspent pandemic relief money, vigorously clawing back as much as possible of the, literally, tens of billions of dollars that were fraudulently paid out, bringing back work requirements for federal safety net programs suspended during the emergency, ceasing the costly and self-defeating war on fossil fuels, and much else. Finally, when a deal is reached, it should have a short time span to ensure administration compliance with its promises. … [Read more...] about How Republicans Can Win The Debt Ceiling Battle

Pandemic-related spending, farm loan waivers and slowing growth are among the reasons which have increased states’ debt over the last few years, according to a parliamentary response. “As per the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) report… States’ outstanding debt has shown a gradual upward movement inter alia due to implementation of Ujjwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY), farm loan waivers, pandemic-related revenue losses, additional expenditures and growth slowdown,” Pankaj Chaudhary, the minister of state in the ministry of finance, said. “However, the RBI has informed that States have been regularly servicing the State Government Securities,” he added. States’ finances have been under the spotlight amid an ongoing debate on freebies. States in India are allowed to borrow from the bond market but there is a cap on how much they can borrow, linked to their gross domestic product. States have also enacted their Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, the compliance to … [Read more...] about Pandemic, loan waivers, slowing growth increase states’ debt. Find out those with high burden

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presenting Union Budget 2023. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Budget speech on February 1 announced a revamped credit guarantee scheme for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). The revamped credit guarantee scheme for MSMEs will come into effect from April 1, 2023, with an infusion of Rs 9,000 crore into the corpus, the FM said. Catch Moneycontrol's live updates on Budget 2023 here This will enable another collateral-free credit of Rs 2 lakh crore. Further, the cost of credit will be reduced by around 1 percent, she added. Experts reckon that the move will prove to be good news for MSMEs that are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. The credit guarantee scheme had a choppy start but over the last two years, banks have been brought on board to lend, and the scheme has helped in alleviating stress in the sector. Read More The recovery of India's MSMEs was advancing swiftly, according to the … [Read more...] about Union Budget 2023: FM announces revamped credit guarantee scheme for MSMEs

Much will depend on the budget’s allocation for healthcare for achieving those goals. The Union Budget 2023-24 has announced the legalisation of the permanent account number (PAN) as a single business identification. The Finance Act, 2023 has an enabling provision or clause that will provide legal backing for PAN to be used as the principal identity of an entity. The move is to allow businesses to use PAN instead of other data as a unique identifier for entering into national single window system to seek different clearances and approvals of the central and state departments. Catch all live updates on Budget 2023 announcements here PAN is a 10-digit unique alphanumeric number issued by the Income Tax Department. PAN enables the IT department to identify/link all transactions of the PAN holder with the department. At present there are over 13 different business IDs, including EPFO, ESIC, GSTN, TIN, TAN and PAN, which are used to apply for various government … [Read more...] about Budget 2023: PAN card gets legal backing as single business ID

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin There is no doubt that over its 36-year life that the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) has housed many people. But how many? As my last post showed, there are many known unknowns about how and how well the LIHTC has functioned over those years. For example, a common number offered as an answer to the question, “how many units has LIHTC created over its 36 years?” the answer is often something like 29 million. Where does that figure come from? Column V in the LIHTC “database,” a column in the Excel spreadsheet that has 3,000 blanks and 1,500 cells with “0” as the answer. It is a challenge to reform a federal expenditure when no deep evaluation is possible for lack of good data. However, I’d like to close the LIHTC portion of the look back at Paul Ryan’s critique with some ideas for reform. I’ve concluded that the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program isn’t really a program at all. It is behemoth , a complex of … [Read more...] about Series: Unwind The LIHTC, Create Tax Benefits For Builders And Families

The central bank's commentary has a hawkish undertone and suggests that more interest rate hikes cannot be ruled out. Dear Reader, The Panorama newsletter is sent to Moneycontrol Pro subscribers on market days. It offers easy access to stories published on Moneycontrol Pro and gives a little extra by setting out a context or an event or trend that investors should keep track of. The RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee met market expectations by increasing the repo rate by 25 basis points, although it left some prayers unanswered. The fond hope was that the MPC would take its cue from global central banks and announce a pause on rate increases. The consolation is that two of the six MPC members didn’t want to raise rates. Nevertheless, the central bank's commentary has a hawkish undertone and suggests that more interest rate hikes cannot be ruled out. This is against what some global central banks have said. The Bank of Canada became the first central bank in a G10 … [Read more...] about Moneycontrol Pro Panorama | MPC plays it safe, more rate hikes coming?

Hassane Kamara of Watford FC looks dejected following their side's defeat in the Premier League match between Manchester City and Watford at Etihad Stadium on April 23, 2022 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images) Hassane Kamara is a high-octane defender at Watford FC in England. He was the club’s player of the year last season despite only joining in January 2022. He’s also emblematic of the financial engineering available to football clubs through the increasingly popular multi-club ownership model. Watford was relegated from the Premier League last summer and Kamara was sold to Udinese of Italy for a profit of about £12 million ($14.4 million). That looked like a great trade — but even better was that Udinese, which is owned by the same Italian family that owns Watford, immediately loaned the player back. No rules were broken and Watford Chairman Scott Duxbury was upfront about the motives, telling the club’s website that the deal aimed to balance … [Read more...] about It’s not just Manchester City. Financial football is becoming more prevalent

BP Plc posted its second-highest quarterly profit on record and announced a further $2.5 billion of share buybacks, capping a stellar period for Big Oil after Russias invasion of Ukraine pushed up energy prices. (Source: Bloomberg) When Bernard Looney took over as chief executive officer of BP Plc in 2020, he promised to quickly decarbonize the British oil major, cutting oil and gas production by 40 percent by 2030 and channeling billions of dollars into wind and solar projects. It was a stronger version of the “Beyond Petroleum” slogan BP once used. On Tuesday, Looney altered course. The company put out some fine words about its commitment to green energy and several billion dollars in investment to back it. But in tandem, it promised shareholders it would invest heavily into oil and gas projects. Instead of a 40 percent output cut, oil and gas production would fall by 25 percent by the end of the decade. Don’t say it out loud — because Looney took pains to emphasise that … [Read more...] about Don’t say it out loud, but BP is back into petroleum