Vivek's Blog

This post is for salaried professionals who just have income through salary and bank/FD interest. Also, if you are a DIY person like me :) Tax season is finally here! People are busy scrambling for their Form 16s and figuring out if they have everything they'd need to file their ITRs. Well, I just filed mine so thought I'd share my experience and some knowledge, that I gathered in the process, here. First, some common questions everyone has: Difference between Financial Year and Assessment Year:  Just remember - you are assessing your financials that took place in the last year! So if today is July 25, 2015, the Financial year was 2014-15 while the Assessment year is 2015-16. Difference between ITR-1 (Sahaj) and ITR-2/2A:  For our purpose, we could use either of these forms but the overall differences are listed out  here . Difference between ITR-2 and ITR-2A:  They are almost the same, just that ITR-2A is a simpler version of ITR-2. Also, ITR-2A ...

I purchased a Garmin nuvi 40LM GPS in the United States. It worked beautifully well - so well that I did not want to part with it when I was moving back to India. But the challenge was not how to put Indian maps on it (that you could purchase online any day) - but the challenge was to put them for FREE! Now since I was going with the free option, I knew I would have to compromise on a few things and I was completely ok with that. So this technique is not for those who could shell out somewhere around ₹5000 for maps that work great and save on a few hassles. I personally felt that in India you really don't need GPS that much, you could ask anyone anywhere on the road and they would be able to guide you to the best of their knowledge. But this technique is for those who just want free Indian (or any other country) maps and can compromise on a few things (which I'll explain later). Let's start with the process! Getting free maps There's a great site to get free maps ...

I recently went on a trip to Las Vegas where we decided to go outside the city for a couple of days. I had heard of beautiful places like Lower Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend, so wanted to drive and explore these places. We had a lot of trouble finding these places due to lack of GPS friendly street addresses so now that we did find them, I thought it would be useful to post the GPS coordinates of these locations so as to make it easier for others to find them. Here goes the list (you may contribute too and I will keep updating it): Lower Antelope Canyon: N 36° 54.153' W 111°24.644' Horseshoe Bend: N 36° 52.598' W 111°30.179' Grand Canyon East Entrance: N 36° 02.137' W 111°49.834' Grand Canyon South Entrance: N 36° 00.019' W 112°07.312' Gateway Arch (St. Louis, MO) Entrance: N 38° 37.532' W 90° 11.075'

Hi Everyone! I recently applied for a duplicate passport since my passport got damaged. I had a lot of trouble understanding the document requirements on BLS website, specially regarding the number of photos and nationality verification forms required for the same. There was all sorts of confusing information everywhere. So today that I have submitted my application successfully, I thought I should share my experiences and help others. That's when the idea of blogging came to my mind and here comes my first ever post! Online application form Click here to go to the online NRI passport application page. It is very important to select the correct Indian mission. For me it was USA-NEW YORK CGI. Click here to find out your correct Indian mission in USA. Visible Mark - If you don't have any, write NONE. Address to be printed on passport - I gave my US address since I did not want to get into the hassle of procuring my Indian address proofs and getting them notarized....