Opinion|Catching elusive taxpayers still a work in progress

A tweet from a government handle, now deleted, was the cause of much upset with social media going a little nuts on the increasing compliance burden on the Indian taxpayer and the increasing intrusion of big government into citizens’ lives. The tweet lists 11 categories of financial transactions that, if made, will trigger reporting by the receiver of the money to the income tax department. Already banks and mutual funds report transactions above a certain threshold. The scope of this reporting is set to expand.

The shops, banks, mutual funds, hotels and so on will make the disclosure to the tax department, and not the taxpayer. The government hopes to find a discrepancy between the income disclosed during the tax filing process and the spends made. As we file our tax returns for financial year 2019-20 (last year), we will see a box that only some people need to tick. These are people who claim that their gross taxable income (before applying any deductions) is ₹2.5 lakh or less, but have made transactions of ₹1 crore or more in a current account, have paid ₹1 lakh or more in electricity bills and have spent ₹2 lakh or more on foreign travel. We see these people around us, they are the ones pulling out wads of cash to pay for high-value gadgets, jewellery, hotel bills and more. They are the ones paying 50-70% of property purchases in cash.

Read more

 

Money with Monika S4 E17 Real estate would be 50% cheaper if bribes were missing

Money with Monika

The Corona Conversations

Season 4 Episode 17

The cost of bribes in the prices we pay for real estate in India

On @livemint

https://www.livemint.com/videos/money-with-monika-the-cost-of-bribes-is-50-of-real-estate-prices-corona-conversations-11595334720331.html

On Facebook

On You Tube

On Instagram

View this post on Instagram

The cost of bribes is 50% of real estate prices Corona Conversations Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, commercial real estate prices have begun to fall. But it remains to be seen whether the trend will be replicated in the residential market. What has kept home prices high in India is the entrenched system of bribes – from the initial stage of land use change, to approvals for the final project. Personal finance expert Monika Halan explains how elimination of corruption from the sector can lead to a drastic fall in prices, and until that happens, what you should consider before investing in real estate. #covid19 #coronavirusoutbreak #realestate #livemint #corruption

A post shared by Mint (@live_mint) on Jul 21, 2020 at 5:58am PDT

Opinion | Real estate will cost up to 50% less, minus bribes

As you pass through a beautiful museum at an airport on the way to your flight, you would stop to admire the sculptures, the paintings, the wall art and murals that make for such compelling beauty and atmosphere. But a former Airports Authority head once stopped me midway in my appreciation of this wonder to burst the beauty bubble. When project costs are mapped closely, art is a great way to inflate costs. Who knows how to value art, he said succinctly. Then it is a matter of connecting dots to figure out what he really said. The cost of expensive infrastructure is paid by the users finally in different ways. One way is the “user development” fees, which ranges from a few hundred to a few thousand over the past years. The latest rates are here.

We know intuitively that we pay for corruption in many ways, but the cost of graft in anything linked to real estate has the potential to cost not just a few hundred rupees to those who have the capacity to afford a flight, but far more. The worst hit is the roof-over-the-head-seeking homeowner who gets priced out of the market or thrown to distant suburbs with poor amenities. The story of residential real estate can be summed up in three words: stuffed or starving. In the premium segment, there is an oversupply, and in the affordable housing segment, there is a demand overhang estimated to be about 10 million units in 2019 and a supply overhang of about 13 million units in the premium and luxury market. What people want they don’t build. What they build, people don’t want. The key to the story is the price.

Read more

 

Opinion | Where has all the money gone from the system?

What’s happened to the Indian economy? From an aspiring 10% growth, we are struggling to do half of that. The mood is down. Consumers are not buying. Household savings are at a low. Corporates are not investing. Gold prices have fallen. Real estate is still comatose. Just the stock market has the steam to keep rising higher. Clearly, there is something deeper to this story—what’s going on with the Indian consumers, savers, investors and entrepreneurs? And why is the market up, when data on consumption, spending, confidence, jobs and growth shows only gloom. On one side, the reasons for this skid off the growth path are said to do with demonetization, a botched GST, the persistent bank NPA problems, the shadow banking mess and hardening of rules. The other argument looks at this being a result of an attempt to switch the Indian business model towards formalization. Whatever may be the reason for the skid, the result right now is a slump in the mood of the economic participants.

Read more

 

Demonetisation, one year later. Success or failure?

Most people have a “where I was” story about the night of 8 November 2016. Some of us also have a story on ‘how much money I had’ on the night that Prime Minister Narendra Modi invalidated 86% of Indian currency. I was just dragging myself back home after my Iyengar yoga class (those who join the Beginners will identify with my use of the word ‘dragging’), ready to eat some dinner and collapse. But of course, the team and I were up until midnight, reporting and writing on the biggest news of a personal finance journalist’s lifetime. How much money did I have? I had three Rs500 notes that day. Having moved to cards and then digital, I’d moved my household staff to bank accounts and electronic transfer of salaries some years back. Cash was needed for everyday buying of milk, bread, eggs, vegetables kind of stuff. The local Mother Dairy booth was accepting old notes for future purchases, so I was spared the lines to deposit my money. We all have our stories of what happened that night. This was mine.

Apart from the personal shock to our money lives, demonetisation quickly became a huge political, social and intellectual battle. The battle lines got drawn deep in the ground and your pro- or anti-Modi stance decided where you stood on the demonetisation debate. I wrote a column one day after demonetisation in which I said that the step will raise the cost of black money, it will not eliminate it. That it is one step in a larger plan to go after corruption. You can read it here: bit.ly/2mmdYeZ. How does it look a year later? Modi gave four reasons for demonetisation: to curb corruption, black money, fake notes and terror finance. To judge the success or failure of demonetisation on these four metrics is almost impossible because demonetisation was one of the several weapons the government has deployed against these issues. But let me try and unpack them.

Has there been a dent in corruption and black money? Anecdotal stories say that high-level corruption in the central government is gone, but the cancer of graft elsewhere in the system still thrives. It is unrealistic to expect the deep-rooted habit of graft to disappear overnight, but at least there is serious political will behind the anti-corruption war in India today. What of black money, or money on which income tax has not been paid? Black money is back in the system—talk to any builder (real estate is the biggest sump of black money and talking to builders is a quick way to figure out if cash deals are back) and they say it is as if demonetisation never happened. But they admit to the cash ratio going down and the fear factor lurking at the back of every deal.

Read more

 

Two weeks of cashless in the country

Two weeks after the sudden death of a bulk of Indian currency notes, the most obvious panic seems to be over but the elephant of demonetisation is yet to work its way through the system. The entire process will take months before the python digests the elephant.

Arguments, edits, opeds, conversations, debates and social media are sharply divided on what the currency replacement will achieve. I remain in the ‘it’s good for the country’ side of the debate and want to address some of the arguments against demonetisation.

Read more

 

We did say we wanted less corruption

Some of us in India have paid, what I call, the ‘honesty tax’ for decades. Our money is salaried, there is nothing on top, we pay our taxes, keep our accounts clean, pay for large spends by card, do real estate deals in white and become the guys who obey traffic signals while others in bigger cars zoom away with a smirk. We pull out our cards and carry home our small shopping bag. The guy in the next aisle pulls out a brick of cash and thumbs out a lakh in notes to take home the high-value gadget. We drive our Maruti home with the EMI (equated monthly instalment) sitting in the backseat, the luxury SUV guy comes with a sack of cash and scrapes our car out of his way. We wait to buy a house with white money, don’t get the choice set, pay more and end up feeling like losers for being honest.

Read More

 

How good is it? How bad is it?

When I began this column in March 2009, I remember writing my first piece on the macro mess India was in and how a spendthrift government, which took an 8% growth rate and a 26% rise in tax revenues in the previous years as the new normal, messed up big time. You can read that column here: http://bit.ly/2bynE0d . With elections around the corner, money was splurged on massive loan waivers and many other let’s-give-them-money-and get-their-votes schemes. It worked and the government came back to power. The next five years got the country closer to disaster, with bank books getting stuffed with questionable loans, policy paralysis and big corruption in the central government and bureaucracy.

Read more:

Make using cash expensive

Event one: I’m buying something from an Apple store for a favourite nephew. I’ve just used my credit card to make the payment. I’m asked to show an identity proof, which is then photocopied and the paper kept. Why, I ask. The card companies want us to do this so that stolen cards are not used. At the other check-out station, a man slaps a thick wad of cash on the counter. He has just bought something that costs almost Rs.1 lakh. The cash is counted. A receipt is issued and the man walks out. Why did you not take his identification, I ask. Mild titter of mirth—not needed, ma’am; many people pay cash. Unfair, isn’t it? I’m paying by card; so it is obviously tax paid money. That guy is paying by cash. We know who carries so much cash, right? Nods all around. And then we all move on. That is how it is in India. Cash gets the fast lane.

Read more

 

See the pointing finger. In the mirror

Deep-seated graft and related crime has been a subject matter for many Hindi movies. Many of these end with a bunch of intrepid fighters of the system exposing the incumbent club of the powerful—politicians, police and bureaucrats are the usual suspects—resulting in either incarceration, or a public killing while the public applauds. The events of the past 10 days look almost like a movie script playing out as the government cracks down on a network of government officials, middlemen and companies that traffics information. But as those suspected were led away, there was no crowd of applauding public. I wonder if the missing applause is because the cynical public thinks that these guys will get away or is it because it finds its own moral fibre stretched?

Read more