Announce tax sops for I-T & GST

Hyderabad: There is urgent need for announcing tax concessions both IT and GST is the general opinion of the people who feel that they are getting overburdened by high taxes.

They rue it is becoming difficult to manage the household budget even when there are more than one bread earners as the prices of pulses, milk petroleum products and other essentials had increased to a new high.

It is no more possible for a family to allocate a definite sum of money to buy essential commodities at the beginning of every month. People are wondering how to adjust the expenditure, what services to be cut to manage the monthly expenditure and how to save for the rainy day. This situation is because of rise in inflation and fall in purchasing power of the average Indian families.

Rani Kumari, a housewife says that though there are two earning members in the house it was becoming difficult to sustain the family. The prices of pulses, wheat, rice and edible oil etc had shot up and the groceries bill had doubled. The cost of vegetables too is not within the reach of common man. She said till two years back her grocery bill used to be around Rs 2000 but now even after reducing the items, the bill comes to about Rs 4000 per month.

People rue that pulses that used to sell for Rs 60-80 a kg now sell for Rs150 per kg. Rajesh a techie said in addition to increase in grocery and milk prices, the high cost of LPG cylinder and petrol prices were ruining the family economy. Nothing is available at reasonable prices not even onions and potatoes, he said.

Inflation has for sure wreaked havoc in India this year. Among the top eight parameters like GDP growth rate, forex reserves, import-export etc. that shaped the country's economy this year, it has been observed that soaring inflation has been one of the major factors to have affected the economy.

Simply said, inflation is the rate of growth in the cost of goods and services. In India, it is calculated year-on-year, which compares a month's prices to those from the same month the year before. This rate allows us to estimate how much cost of living will rise over time.

Meenakshi (46), a mother of two whose husband works as a car driver, told IANS that some time ago, Rs 5,000 was enough to meet the food expenses. Now, even Rs 10,000 is a challenging amount for them to meet the needs.