From relaxed know-your-customer rules to a universal number for provident funds, quite a few moves were made in 2014 that aimed to make life a little easier for the hassled common man. Here’s recapping the good and the bad in the year that’s about to come to a close.

Easy portability The employee provident fund authorities were an active lot, ironing out the hassles we commonly face in EPF accounts. The Universal PF Account Number (UPAN) was the EPFO’s breakthrough reform; this number, for each individual, will house all different PF member numbers allotted to that individual. It makes for easy tracking of provident fund details if you’ve several membership numbers with different employers.

Going a step further, the UPAN makes it far simpler now to transfer the balance in the EPF account when joining a new workplace. Simply provide the UPAN, and your employer will add on the new membership number.

The know-your-customer details are tagged to the UPAN, reducing the dependency on the employer to provide the details. EPF accounts are therefore now more easily ‘portable’. Further, with the EPFO turning tech-savvy, accounts can be checked online. Requests for transfer of amounts when you switch jobs can also be done online. What’s more, the EPFO made it mandatory for employers to provide employees’ bank details this year, adding yet another layer of convenience.

The convenience factor also came into play with electronic voting on company meetings made mandatory for listed companies this year. So, as a shareholder, you need not trip across to that far-off city to cast your vote.

You can exercise your rights on extraordinary meetings, annual general meetings and the like using the e-voting platform provided by NSDL or CDSL platforms or even through registrars. The process of casting votes is also perfectly simple and easy to follow.

Rules relaxed Paying off your home loan early (as long as it was a floating rate loan) attracted penalties until the Reserve Bank did away with it back in 2012. That removal of pre-payment penalties was extended to all floating rate term loans from this year, whether the loan was taken from a bank or an NBFC. The year also brought some relief on penalties for not maintaining minimum account balances in bank accounts. The RBI recently indicated that banks should charge customers proportional to the extent of shortfall and not a flat rate, a rule that comes into effect later next year.

Customers also get a period of a month to restore the balance to the threshold required.

Next, for those classified as ‘low risk’, keeping KYC details updated became easier.

The RBI said that for such account holders, simply posting a self-certification saying that their status (identity and address) is unchanged will suffice. No submitting of fresh proofs in person!

Taxes saved Another move to be cheered was a longer rope to save taxes. In the new Government’s July budget, the basic income exemption limit was raised to ₹2.5 lakh from ₹2 lakh. This was followed up with a raise in limit of savings under the Sec 80 C umbrella to ₹1.5 lakh after having stayed put at ₹1 lakh for several years.

The public provident fund, among the best risk-free instruments, falls under this bracket and here, the investment limit was kicked up to ₹1.5 lakh. Also raised was the deduction available on interest paid on housing loan by ₹50,000.

The dark side But while several moves sought to smoothen out tangles for borrowers and savers, it was still not all hunky dory. One move that served up a lot of grief was the cutting of free transactions at bank ATMs.

Following an RBI directive, banks capped the number of free transactions at other bank ATMs to three, in the six metros. Customers of banks such as HDFC Bank and Axis Bank have to pay charges on transactions beyond a threshold at their own ATMs as well. Others could follow suit. And while on the subject of banks, those ignoring their banks’ repeated calls for updating KYC stood to have ‘partial freezing’ imposed on their accounts, in a phased manner.

Also inviting investor ire were tweaks in the taxation of debt mutual funds. One, to qualify for long-term capital gains tax (taxed at 20 per cent with indexation benefits), debt funds have to now be held for three years. Previously, a holding period of one year was enough for the debt fund to be classified as long term.

And two, dividend distribution tax for debt funds was changed — it would now be calculated on the gross amount and not the net amount, as was done earlier, resulting in a rise in actual tax payout.

Also, not finding a place this time around were the popular tax-free bonds.

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