corporate taxes given that the resulting increased purchasing power in the hands of the common man will only give a thrust to the manufacturing sector increase in deduction available under section 80canother big expectation from the budget is an increase in the deduction available under section 80c of the incometax act presently an amount of rs 100000 is allowable as a deduction from the taxable income if the same is invested in the prescribed savings instruments paid as life insurance premia and or incurred for prescribed purposes since last year organizations such as lic have been voicing concern over the decline in attractiveness of long term investments prescribed under section 80c and have been demanding a separate bucket of deduction for long term savings instruments the demand seems to be justified since the younger generation is generally averse in investing in long term schemes even the classical savings instruments such as employee provident fund ppf etc are not opted by many of the youngsters accordingly providing a separate bucket of investment for the long term saving instruments viz life insurance and pension plans would not only prove to be a blessing for the younger generation but will also generate longterm funds for the economya separate limit under section 80c of rs 20000 reserved only for long term saving instruments over the existing limit should be a good starting point rationalization of levy of surcharge on individualspresently an individual is liable to pay an additional surcharge of 10 percent if the individuals income exceeds rs 1000000 this is in sharp contrast to the corporates where surcharge is applicable only if the income is more than rs 1 crore it is being increasingly felt that to meet the objective of progressive system of taxation and in the interest of equity the levy of surcharge in case of individuals should also be only in cases where their income exceeds rs 1 crorejustification for levy of surcharge in any case needs to be looked upon afresh by the government given that surcharge had been brought in as an interim measure to augment collections during times when the country was faced with natural calamities and other adversities the buoyant tax collections in the present year should give enough reasons to the government to at least reduce the surcharge if not completely do away with it better tax payer servicesefiling of incometax returns online pan application etc have been steps taken in the right direction and one hopes that more such measures are implemented to enhance tax payers convenienceone of the biggest grudges that the tax payer has is the delay or even nonreceipt of valid refunds there have been certain improvements in the process over the last year but a lot still needs to be done to address this grievance the refund mechanism in place does not compare favorably with those in developed countries where obtaining refund is a smooth timebound process the government needs to clearly bring around radical changes in the mechanism a