As far as amount up to which you can gift to your wife is concerned there is no upper cap and all the gits are tax exempt. However any income which your wife earns on the money so gifted shall be added to your income due to applicability of clubbing provisions. In order to avoid the clubbing of income, you can give interest free loan to your wife and she can make investment in shares. Since this is not your fulltime job, I would advise you to stay away from direct investing in equity and in stead invest in equity oriented mutual funds with good historical performance and belonging to reputed fund house. Please understand that investing in equity is very risky and volatile for short term so unless your time horizon of investing is more than 7-8 years please do not invest the money in equity.

Whether you can do trading in shares in future and option, being a government employee, depends on your service rules. So in case your service rules allow you to indulge in trading in derivatives, the income earned on such transactions shall be treated as normal income and will be added to your regular income like salary, interest etc.. Though tax will be deducted by your employer from your salary, you will still have to pay the tax on such income at the rate applicable to your either by way of advance tax or self assessment.. Alternatively you can disclose your income from such trading to the employer and request them to deduct higher TDS.

Taxation of capital gains on redevelopment of a property is new phenomena and just evolving. Though you have demolished your house and handed over the possession of the land to the developer, you will still be able to claim the tax exemption under Section 54. As far as the question as to the number of the houses for which you will get exemption, the law has been amended by finance act 2014 restricting the benefits only for one house unless both the flats which you will get are going to be used as single residential unit. The incidence of capital gains generally gets triggered on the incidence of transfer of the capital gains even if you have not received the sale consideration. So in your case staggering of the receipts of money from the developer is not going to help you in any tax planning under Section 54EC for capital gains bonds. Since the subject of taxation of capital gains on redevelopment of property is not so simple and need to take into consideration various factors, I would advise you to kindly take help from a Chartered Accountants or a tax expert as the stakes are generally very high.

Your income from FNO shall be added to your other taxable incomes as this is treated as normal income and is taxed at normal rate. So the tax on your FNO income shall be payable at the slab rate applicable to you.

Since finance year 2014-2015 is over it is late for me to suggest any measure for you to save tax for that period. As far as calculation of your tax liability is concerned. It is simple add up all your taxable incomes like pension and interest on fixed deposit in your case for the year. Deduct any deductions for eligible amounts under section 80 C and 80 D. Presuming your do not have any other income and do not have anything to claim under Section 80 C, 80 D or any other sections, your total income for the year is Rs. 3,05,964/-. I presume your are not senior citizen. Your tax liability shall be Rs. 5,596/- (Being 10% on the amount in excess of Rs. 2.50 lacs) plus 3% education surcharge. For saving income tax for the current year, you can contribute up to Rs. 1.50 lacs either towards Senior Citizen Saving Scheme and or 5 years tax savings bank FD.

: For availing the benefit of additional Rs. 50,000/- deduction, you need to contribute toward Tier I account. It is only tier I account, contribution to which are eligible for deduction under Section 80CCD. Yes you can contribute towards your Tier I account yourself. Tier II account is a like a saving account where you can temporarily park your extra savings which you can either withdraw later on or transfer to Tier I account. Opening of Tier II account is optional and not mandatory. Please note withdrawals from Tier I account are generally not permitted before completion of 60 years of age.

The landlords PAN would not be required since the rent does not cross Rs 1 lakh in the year but it is better to provide this as it would not lead to any problems later on.