Chartered Accountant · Gurgaon, India

CA Akhilesh Kumar

Direct tax · GST · Finance

Working notes from practice — tax and finance worked through properly, with the arithmetic shown. No hot takes, no affiliate links.

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Direct Tax

18 Aug 2026 · 8 min read

Old Regime or New: How to Actually Decide

The comparison everyone runs is the wrong one. Instead of asking which regime is better, work out your break-even deduction — the single number that settles it in about two minutes.

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01 Old Regime or New: How to Actually Decide The comparison everyone runs is the wrong one. Instead of asking which regime is better, work out your break-even deduction — the single number that settles it in about two minutes. Direct Tax 18 Aug 2026 · 8 min 02 Capital Gains After the 2024 Overhaul The July 2024 changes did more than move rates. They removed indexation for most assets, flattened holding periods, and quietly changed which investments make sense to hold. Direct Tax 16 Aug 2026 · 9 min 03 The 4% Rule Is a Starting Point, Not a Plan It came from a 1994 study of a single country, a single asset mix, and a 30-year window. Useful — but people are loading far more weight onto it than it was built to carry. Investing 14 Aug 2026 · 9 min 04 Presumptive Taxation: Who It Fits, and the Traps Sections 44AD and 44ADA let small businesses and professionals declare income as a percentage of turnover and skip the books. Genuinely useful — and routinely misapplied. Direct Tax 11 Aug 2026 · 10 min 05 The TDS Calendar That Prevents Most Notices Almost every TDS notice I see traces back to one of four things, and all four are calendar problems rather than technical ones. A working routine to avoid them. Direct Tax 08 Aug 2026 · 7 min 06 Index Funds Won. Now What? Passive investing went from heresy to default in forty years. The interesting questions are no longer about whether it works, but about what happens when almost everyone does it. Investing 06 Aug 2026 · 8 min 07 Six Filing Mistakes That Generate Notices The department's systems now cross-check your return against a great deal of data it already holds. Most notices are the result of a mismatch nobody looked for before filing. Direct Tax 03 Aug 2026 · 7 min 08 GST for a Small Service Business, End to End When registration becomes compulsory, what changes the day it does, and the three recurring obligations that follow. Written for the freelancer or small firm crossing the line for the first time. GST 30 Jul 2026 · 9 min 09 Your Emergency Fund Is Probably the Wrong Size Three to six months of expenses is the standard answer. It is also a number nobody derived from anything. Here is how to compute yours from actual inputs. Personal Finance 27 Jul 2026 · 6 min 10 Reading a Cash Flow Statement Like an Investor Earnings are an opinion; cash is a fact. A working tour of the third statement, and the five lines that tell you the most about a business. Corporate 18 Jul 2026 · 11 min 11 SaaS Metrics That Actually Predict Anything Most dashboards track a dozen numbers and forecast with none of them. A short list of the metrics that survive contact with a board meeting. Corporate 05 Jul 2026 · 8 min 12 Stablecoins and the Quiet Rewiring of Payments Strip away the price speculation and something more mundane is happening underneath: a parallel settlement rail, and incumbents quietly building on it. Fintech 22 Jun 2026 · 9 min 13 Sequence-of-Returns Risk, Explained Without the Jargon Two portfolios, identical average returns, wildly different outcomes. The order of the years matters enormously once you start withdrawing — and not at all before. Investing 11 Jun 2026 · 5 min 14 Avalanche, Snowball, and What Actually Gets Debt Paid One method is mathematically optimal. The other has better completion rates. The research on which wins is more interesting than the argument. Personal Finance 29 May 2026 · 6 min

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Updated 20 Aug 2026

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