Capital market seeks changes in capital gains

Mumbai, Feb 7 (UNI) The broking community has requested Finance Minister P Chidambaram to do certain fine tuning of the capital gains loss to bring in more clarity and avoid harassment by IT Officials.

Leading broker C A Rakesh Mehta, Chairman of Mehta Equities, while talking to newsmen here, said certain criteria laid down in the capital gains were vague and left to the discretion of the bureaucrats to act upon. This was leading to harassment as officials look to earn more revenue. There was need for specific guidelines that could help the community, he said.

Similarly, the Finance Minister also needs to draw a line of distinction between trading and investing activity. The calculation of capital gains for a holding period of 15 days or less should be treated as capital gains from trading, while the holding period between 15 to 179 days as short term capital gains. Holding period beyond 180 days must be considered as long term capital gains.

On service tax, he said that instead of the broking community needing to maintain separate books, the tax could be deducted at source by the stock exchange itself as full details of transaction was available with them.

Mr Mehta felt the Budget would have a rural bias and emphasis would be on improving the rural infrastructure.

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