Start-ups bat for tax sops, investment incentives in Union Budget

The startup community, which has started facing funds crunch of late, is looking to the Union Budget 2016 for an easy tax regime, relaxation in investment norms and furtherincentives for innovation.

The country is home to over 18,000 startups, making it the third-largest in the world after the US and England.

“iSpirt has represented to the finance ministry that a small basket of tax sops merely will not be effective for the existing system which is riddled with several bottlenecks," co-founder of iSpirt Foundation Sharad Sharma told PTI. Read More.

Save for retirement and enjoy tax benefit, too

Increasing life span and high inflation mean that you need to save more to meet your retirement schemes needs. To help you meet this challenge, HDFC Mutual Fund has launched HDFC Retirement Savings Fund, which is both an equity-linked savings scheme (ELSS) and a pension scheme.

Investments made in this fund will allow you to enjoy tax deduction under Section 80C. The fund comes with a lock-in period of five years. The new fund offer (NFO) will close on February 19.