Opt for individual mediclaim over family floater plan

I have two small houses. One of them is self-occupied and has no outstanding housing loan. The other one is rented out and has a housing loan on it. My income from house property is negative (i.e net-off of rent received and interest paid on housing loan). Do I have to use Saral-II for filing income tax return for Assessment Year 2010-11.     
KN Joshi

Your case is interesting. The notification says that Saral II return form is “to be used by an individual whose total income for the assessment year 2010-11 includes:
(a) ...............; or
(b) Income from one house property (excluding cases where loss is brought forward from previous years); or
(c) ..............

While you can try and take a stance that the total income includes income from only one rented-out house property (the income from the self-occupied house property is to be taken as nil) this kind of hyper-technical argument is very avoidable.

Since you own two houses and income of one of the house is nil, you should file your return in form ITR-2. Incidentally, please get the wealth tax liability assessed from your tax advisor as only one self-occupied property is exempt from wealth tax and if the value of the other property (as computed under the wealth tax rules) minus the loan taken to acquire it is more than
Rs 15 lakh, you will have wealth tax liability.

I am a 32-year-old salaried man. My wife is 26 and I have two sons, one aged 2 years and the other 2 months. I am interested to take a floater mediclaim policy for sum insured approx Rs 1-2 lakh, which can bear any sudden medical and hospitalisation expenses. I am living in Chennai.

We strongly recommend an individual policy for the reasons mentioned in detail on the link http://www.apnainsurance.co/health-insurance-india/individual-floater.html 
Briefly, it is because in most cases, the so-called lower premium advantage of a family floater is negated once the age of the oldest member reaches 45 years or so. The other big reason is the lack of history for other members when the eldest member reaches the maximum age of renewability or the eldest member expires. 
You can see the comparisons of all mediclaim policies on various parameters at http://www.apnainsurance.com/health-insurance-india/compare.html

The writer is CEO, Apna Paisa, a search comparison engine for loans, insurance and investments. He can be reached at hrdna@apnapaisa.com