How will the Budget impact your investments?

With less than a week to go before the Union Budget is announced, it is important for us to understand what we should expect.

The Budget changes how much money we take home every month, what we save and how we invest our money. We need to prepare our household budgets and our investment portfolios for the changes.

ET NOW's Faye D'Souza caught up with experts in the field of personal finance and taxation on the 'INVESTOR'S GUIDE – PRE -BUDGET SPECIAL' to ask them how the budget would affect our finances.

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Will the FM raise tax exemption limits? Will he manage to keep both industrialists and common people happy? To know all about the Union Budget 2012-13, Click here!

The guests were Pranav Sayta, Patner at E&Y, Vishal Kapoor - GM of Wealth Management at Standard Chartered Bank, Kaustuv Roy- ED of Cushman and Wakefield and Dhirendra Kumar - CEO of Value Research.

Right from the onset of the show, the guest all agreed this will be a make or break budget for the UPA government, as the last opportunity push through reforms before the general elections of 2014.

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Will the FM raise tax exemption limits? Will he manage to keep both industrialists and common people happy? To know all about Union Budget 2012-13, Click here!

Pranav Sayta was of the opinion that the while the fiscal deficit will not allow the FM the room to change the highest tax slab of 30 per cent.

"The FM might increase the lowest threshold from Rs 180,000 to Rs 200.000, which would result in a token savings of just  Rs 2,000 a year for tax payers."

But the consensus on the panel was on indirect taxes that are expected to be increased this Budget. "The FM may hike excise duty and service tax by 2% each and this will result in high inflation," Pranav said.

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Will the FM raise tax exemption limits? Will he manage to keep both industrialists and common people happy? To know all about Union Budget 2012-13, Click here!

Vishal Kapoor suggested investors take advantage of the high returns that long tern debt funds are currently offering before the interest rate cycle begins to dip.

"We expect the RBI to begin reducing interest rates soon which will help drive corporate growth. This will also open up avenues for debt investments."

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Will the FM raise tax exemption limits? Will he manage to keep both industrialists and common people happy? To know all about Union Budget 2012-13, Click here!

Kaustuv Roy indicated the need for the Finance minster to increase the tax deductible on home loan interest repayments from the current Rs 150,000 a year to Rs 300,000 a year to factor in the inflationary rise in the price of homes in urban India.

Although he did suggest we might see a decline in infrastructure spending by the government this year to bring down the fiscal deficit this would result in slower growth in real estate markets outside of our urban centers.

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Will the FM raise tax exemption limits? Will he manage to keep both industrialists and common people happy? To know all about Union Budget 2012-13, Click here!

Dhirendra Kumar, told investors that a well planned out portfolio would weather the storm caused by events like the union budget in the stock markets.

"Do not take your eye off your long term goals. If you are investing systematically and for the long term then you have nothing to worry about," he said.

He did say he would like to see a budget that has more incentive for senior citizen's investments in term of tax breaks.

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Will the FM raise tax exemption limits? Will he manage to keep both industrialists and common people happy? To know all about Union Budget 2012-13, Click here