Dear Modi sarkar, what about domestic black money?

narendra_modi
The Lok Sabha passed the Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets (Imposition of New Tax) Bill, 2015 or the foreign black money Bill, yesterday. The ministry of finance 2012 white paper on black money defines black money as: “any income on which the taxes imposed by government or public authorities have not been paid.” The wealth that has been accumulated in this way “may consist of income generated from legitimate activities or activities which are illegitimate per se, like smuggling, illicit trade in banned substances, counterfeit currency, arms trafficking, terrorism, and corruption,” the white paper goes on to suggest.
Of course this wealth that has been accumulated through tax evasion has “neither been reported to the public authorities at the time of their generation nor disclosed at any point of time during their possession.”
Some portion of this black money over the years has managed to escape the Indian shores and has been invested abroad. An estimate made by Washington-based research and advocacy group Global Financial Integrity in a report titled Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2003-2012, suggests that around $439.6 billion of black money left the Indian shores, between 2003 and 2012. Through the foreign black money Bill the government is attempting to get this money back.
Also, given the penal provisions of the Bill, an attempt is being made to ensure that in the days to come, citizens pay tax on their income, instead of accumulating it as black money and then transferring it abroad.
As the finance minister Arun Jaitley put it yesterday: “All those who keep money outside — time is running out for them as the world is moving to an automatic information exchange and soon, when that is available, they will be penalised for their action.”
And what are these penalties like? The Bill states that undisclosed foreign income as well as assets will be taxed at the rate of 30%, without allowing for any exemptions or deductions which are allowed under the Income-Tax Act, 1961. This will be accompanied by a penalty equal to three times the amount of tax. Hence, the tax and penalty on undisclosed overseas income as well as assets can amount to as much as 120% (30% + 90%). Further, the amount of tax to be paid on foreign assets will be computed on the basis of its current market price and not the price at which it was bought.
Nevertheless, there is a way out of this. After the Bill becomes an Act, the government will offer a short compliance window, which will allow those with undisclosed foreign assets and income to declare them, pay a tax of 30% and a penalty of 30%.
The Bill also has a provision which allows the government to charge a penalty of Rs 10 lakh for the inaccurate disclosure of foreign assets, along with a rigorous imprisonment of six months to seven years, the first time around. Second and subsequent offences are punishable with fines of Rs 25 lakh to Rs 1 crore and a rigorous imprisonment three to 10 years.
On the face of it, the Bill seems like an honest attempt to crack down on black money that has already left the country and that might leave the country in the days to come. But there are several questions that crop up here.
Why is a short compliance window being offered? It makes the taxpayers who have been honestly declaring their foreign income as well as assets till date, look a tad stupid. Just because someone is willing to pay a fine of 30% and declare his foreign assets, does that make his less guilty? Or is this another tax amnesty scheme in disguise being offered by the government?
Further, why is there a distinction being made between domestic and foreign black money? The definition of black money in the ministry of finance white paper does not make any distinction between black money in the country and black money that has left the shores. Ultimately, almost all black money originates in the country, when people earn an income and do not pay a tax on it. So why is this artificial distinction being made? Why couldn’t the government have come up with a law which covered both domestic as well as foreign black money? Its now been in office for close to one year.
The answer perhaps lies in the way political funding works in this country. An analysis carried out by the National Election Watch and Association of Democratic Reforms reveals that during the period 2004-2005 and 2011-12, the total income of the national political parties was Rs. 4,899.46 crores. The Congress party declared the highest income of Rs 2,365.02 crores. It was followed by the Bhartiya Janata Party which declared an income of Rs 1,304.22 crores.
Between 2004-05 and 2011-12, there were two Lok Sabha elections(in 2004 and 2009) and multiple state assembly elections. It doesn’t take rocket science to come to the conclusion that the amount of donations declared by the political parties were clearly not enough to fight so many elections.
Within 90 days of completion of the General Elections, political parties are required to submit their election expenditure to the Election Commission of India. The National Election Watch and Association of Democratic Reforms has analysed this expenditure for the last Lok Sabha election and it makes for a very interesting reading. This expenditure statement contains the “details of the total amount received as funds in the form of cash, cheques and demand drafts and the total amount spent under various heads.”
The total amount of funds collected by national political parties for the 2014 Lok Sabha election was at Rs 1158.59 crores. This was 35.5% higher than the funds collected for the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. The total declared expenditure of the national political parties was Rs 1308.75 crore, up by 49.4% from 2009.
Now compare this to an estimate made by the Centre for Media Studies in March 2014. It estimated that around Rs 30,000 crore would be spent during the 16th Lok Sabha elections which happened in April and May 2014. Of this amount, the government would spend around Rs 7,000-8,000 crore to conduct the elections. The remaining amount of around Rs 22,000-23,000 crore would be spent by the candidates fighting the elections.
Of course, national political parties are not the only parties fighting elections. Nevertheless, the difference between the officially declared expenditure and the ‘real’ expenditure to fight elections, is huge. Where does this money come from? The domestic black money essentially finances political parties and in the process elections in India. And given this, no government(and political party) can really go after it. Meanwhile, they will keep talking about foreign black money.

Moral of the story—You don’t kill the goose that lays golden eggs.

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

The column originally appeared on DailyO on May 12, 2015

Is Modi’s luck on oil running out?

narendra_modi
In mid April earlier this year, the finance minister Arun Jaitley spoke at the Peterson Institute, a Washington based think tank.
In his speech, Jaitley said that in late 2013, India was “teetering” and was “on the edge of a macro-economic crisis”. “Inflation was at double-digits, the current account deficit at 4 percent of GDP, growth was decelerating sharply, investor confidence was evaporating, capital was fleeing the country, the rupee was plunging; fiscal deficits were high; and India was reeking with the odour of corruption scandals and weak governance,” Jaitley went on to add.
After the Narendra Modi government came to power, most of these economic problems have been corrected, Jaitley said during the course of his speech. Jaitley further said that: “A budget…which reinivigorates growth by emphasizing public investment while maintaining fiscal discipline and protecting the vulnerable,” was passed.
What Jaitley, like a good politician, missed out on saying was that a lot of economic factors improved simply because the oil prices crashed. On May 26, 2014, when the Narendra Modi government took oath of office, the price of the Indian basket of crude oil was at $108.05 per barrel. It fell by around 60% to $43.36 per barrel by January 14, 2015.
This rapid fall in the price of oil helped set many economic factors right. India imports close to 80% of its oil requirements. As the oil price fell, oil imports came down in dollar terms bringing down the current account deficit. In technical terms, the current account deficit is the difference between total value of imports and the sum of the total value of its exports and net foreign remittances. Or to put it in simpler terms, it is the difference between outflow (through imports) and inflow (through imports and foreign remittances) of foreign exchange.
Further, oil is bought and sold in dollars. When Indian companies buy oil, they need to pay in dollars. This pushes up the demand for dollars and leads to the value of the rupee falling against the dollar. When oil prices rise, Indian companies need more dollars to buy oil. And this in turn puts a greater amount of pressure on the value of the rupee against the dollar. With oil prices falling dramatically, the total amount of dollars needed to buy oil also fell. This, to some extent, stabilized the value of the rupee against the dollar.
Falling oil prices even had an impact on the fiscal deficit. Fiscal deficit is the difference between what a government earns and what it spends. When the oil prices were rising the Congress led UPA government did not allow the oil marketing companies (Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum) which sell oil products, to sell them at a price at which it was financially viable for them to do so.
In the process they incurred under-recoveries. The government along with oil production companies like ONGC and Oil India Ltd, compensated the oil marketing companies for these under-recoveries. This led to the government expenditure going up and in the process the fiscal deficit also went up. A higher fiscal deficit leads to the government borrowing more, in the process pushing up interest rates, as the amount of money that others can borrow comes down.
Falling oil prices also had some impact on taming rampant double digit inflation.
In his Washington speech Jaitley took credit for all of the above economic factors improving because of the change in government. Nevertheless, falling oil prices had a huge role to play in the improvement on the economic front, Jaitley’s speech notwithstanding.
Oil prices have been rising in the recent past. On March 31, 2015, the last day of the financial year 2014-2015, the price of the Indian basket for crude oil was at $53.64 per barrel. On May 8, 2015 (the most recent data point available), the price of the Indian basket of crude oil was at $64.05 per barrel. Hence, the oil price has risen by close to 50% from mid January 2015 onwards.
What does not help is the fact that one dollar is now worth close to Rs 64. This means that the Indian companies buying oil will have to pay more. As long as they are able to pass this on to the end consumers of oil products like diesel and petrol, it does not really matter. But what if they are not?
In October 2014, the government had deregulated the price of diesel, allowing the oil companies to set the price of diesel depending on the prevailing international price of oil. Interestingly, the government used the fall in oil prices as an opportunity to shore up its revenues from oil by increasing the excise duty on petrol and diesel multiple times.
At close to $64 per barrel, the price of oil is still around 41% lower than where it was on May 26, 2014, when the Modi government took oath of office. Nevertheless, the price of petrol in Mumbai is at Rs 70.84 per litre, only 11.5% lower from the time when the Modi government came to power. The price of diesel is 12.8% lower.
The real test of deregulation will come if the price of oil keeps going up and the price of petrol and diesel cross the levels they were at when Narendra Modi came to power. In fact, the oil minister
Dharmendra Pradhan recently said: “The subsidy-sharing formula…can be extended…if the current market situation prevails.” He was referring to the compensation paid by the oil production companies like ONGC and OIL to the oil marketing companies. The compensation has come down because of the fall in the price of oil. The oil production companies still continue to compensate the oil marketing companies for the under-recoveries suffered on selling cooking gas etc.
But what Pradhan did not say is what happens if the current market situation does not prevail and the oil prices continue to go up? Will the compensation provided by the oil production companies go up? This would mean that the government would force the oil marketing companies to sell oil products like diesel and petrol at an unviable price.
It would also mean that the government would have to share the compensation provided to the oil marketing companies for their under-recoveries, with the oil production companies. It would lead to a higher fiscal deficit. Rising oil prices will also put pressure on the current account deficit as well as the value of the rupee against the dollar. Inflation will also go up to some extent depending on how much increase in the price of oil is allowed to be passed on to the end consumer. A higher inflation will mean that the Reserve Bank of India will not cut interest rates.
To conclude, the Modi government was very lucky with the price of oil falling by 60% between May 2014 and January 2015. That luck might now have started to run out, as it completes its first year in office.

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

The column originally appeared on DailyO on May 11, 2015

Black money in our backyard

narendra_modi
Getting black money from abroad has been one of the pet issues of the Narendra Modi government. Black money is essentially money on which taxes have not been paid.
Estimates made by
Global Financial Integrity in a report titled Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2003-2012, suggest that around $439.6 billion of black money left the Indian shores, between 2003 and 2012.
India is ranked number fourth (behind China, Russia and Mexico) when it comes to the total amount of black money leaving a developing country. The interesting thing nonetheless is that the quantum of money leaving India has increased dramatically during the Congress led UPA years.
In 2003, around $10.18 billion left the country. By 2012, this had jumped by more than 9 times to $94.8 billion. Interestingly, the number in 2009 was at $29 billion. This clearly tells us that the second term of the Congress led UPA which started in May 2009 was fairly corrupt.
Also, the amount of money leaving China grew by 3.9 times between 2003 and 2012. In case of Russia the increase was 3 times, whereas in case of Mexico the increase was 1.6 times. Hence, the jump in the Indian case was clearly the most.
The $439.6 billion that has left the country works out to around 23% of the Indian GDP of $1.88 trillion in 2013. Given this, it is a large amount of money and hence, the Modi government’s interest in getting this money back, seems justified.
While things may always be possible, what we need to look at is whether they are probable. And the answer in this case is no. Conventional wisdom has it that all this money is lying in Swiss banks. But that is an incorrect assumption to make.
There are around 70 tax havens all around the world. Given this, the money that has left Indian shores could be anywhere. Tax havens are unlikely to cooperate with the Indian government in helping it get back the black money stashed abroad.
The economies of many tax havens run on black money.
So does that mean the government should give up on its pursuit of black money? Of course not. It should concentrate on the black money that is stashed in India.
There are no clear estimates of the total amount of black money in India. As per a confidential report submitted to the government by
the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in December 2013, the black money economy could be three fourths the size of the Indian economy. This report was accessed by The Hindu in August 2014.
There are other estimates which are not so big. Nevertheless, what we know for sure is that only around 2.9% of Indians pay income tax. In fact, former finance minister P Chidambaram in his February 2013 budget speech had said that India had only 42,800 people with a taxable income of Rs 1 crore or more.
Now compare this with the fact that around 30,000 luxury cars are sold in India every year. Both Audi and Mercedes sold more than 10,000 cars in India in 2014. A February 2015 report brought by business lobby FICCI makes a similar point.
The report estimates that the number of dollar millionaires(i.e. with assets of Rs 6 crore or more) in India in 2014 stood at around 2.27 lakhs, up from 2.14 lakh in 2013. But the number of taxpayers with a taxable income of more than a crore is less than 50,000.
What this tells us clearly is that there is widespread tax evasion in the country. This tax evasion continues to generate a lot of black money, a major part of which continues to remain country. This is the black money that the government should be going after.
Information technology can play a huge part in this. In fact it already is. As the FICCI report cited earlier points out: “
The Integrated Taxpayer Data Management System is a data mining tool implemented by the I-T department that is used for detection of potential cases of tax evasion. The tool assists in generating a 360-degree profile of the high net-worth assesses.” The government should work towards making this tool even more robust by building in more data into it, in the days to come.
Further, it has to get cracking on the real estate sector where the maximum amount of black money is invested. This black money generates more black money. Going after the biggest property dealers of the National Capital Region, where most black money changes hands, might be a good starting point.
The question is will this government (or for that matter any government) go after domestic black money, given that it finances almost every political party in the country. Now that is something worth thinking about.

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He can be reached at [email protected])

The column originally appeared in the India Today magazine dated May 18, 2015

Five questions for Rahul Gandhi on his sudden love for distressed home buyers

RAHUL GANDHI SHASHI THAROORVivek Kaul

Rahul Gandhi is on a learning spree these days. Yesterday he learnt that Indian middle class also has a problem. A report in The Indian Express points out Rahul as saying: “Mujhe aaj kuch seekhne ko mila. Meri soch thi ki zameen ke mamle pe kisan ko, mazdoor ko, adivasiyon ko dabaya jaata hain. Magar aaj mujhe seekhne ko mila, zameen ke mamle pe middle class logon ko bhi dabaya jaata hai. (I learnt something today. So far, I used to think that only farmers, labourers and tribals are suppressed in land matters. But today I learnt that the middle class is also suppressed).”
The Gandhi family scion said this after meeting distressed home buyers in the National Capital Region. That he did not know that the issue of “land” also impacts the country’s middle class, after having been an MP for more than a decade, is a clear indicator of how well connected he has been with issues that concern the people of this country. But yes he is trying and it’s never too late.
Rahul also said: “They are told that you will get the flat on a particular day but for years they don’t get the flat. They are told the super duper area of the flat would be so much but what is delivered is different.”
There are multiple questions that crop up here. The situation that these home buyers are in currently, did not crop up over the last one year of the Narendra Modi government. It has been work in progress since 2008. So why has Rahul woken up to it now? The answer is fairly straightforward. This sudden concern for the middle class home buyer is a part of the Rahul relaunch.
The second question is how have all these builders managed to get away with taking money from the buyers and not delivering homes even many years later. Rahul met distressed home buyers from the National Capital Region. The Congress party was in power in Haryana (parts of which come under the National Capital Region) for an extended period of time. What did this government do for distressed home buyers in the city of Gurgaon, which is a part of the National Capital Region?
The third question is how have real estate builders in this country managed to have a free run for all these years. When almost every form of investment in this country is regulated, be it mutual funds, stocks, insurance, derivatives and so on, how has real estate managed to be given a free run for so long? The Congress party has been in power at the centre in every decade since independence. Why did it do nothing on this front all these years? Why was the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill introduced only as late as 2013? This after the Congress led UPA government had been in power in Delhi for nine years. Maybe, Rahul can explain all this to the people of this country as well, the next time he decided to speak to the media.
The fourth question is that when opening something as simple as a savings bank account requires multiple documents, why can real estate be almost be bought over the counter, as long as the buyer is willing to pay in cash? How did the system evolve in the way it has? Guess, Rahul can speak to his seniors in the Congress party and maybe they can give him an answer.
The fifth question is what has Rahul’s Congress party done to control the amount of black money being generated in the country, in all the years that it has been in power. As per the Global Financial Integrity report titled
Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2003-2012, around $439.6 billion of black money left the Indian shores, between 2003 and 2012. If this was the amount of black money that left the Indian shores, imagine the kind of black money that must have been generated during the period.
The Congress led UPA government was in power for much of this period. A substantial portion of the black money that is generated finds its way into real estate, driving up prices and making things very difficult for genuine home buyers who want to buy homes to live in them.
This has led to a situation where the real estate market has totally become investor driven. What did the Congress led UPA government do about this in the ten years that it has been in power?
To conclude, since Rahul Gandhi is in a learning phase, it’s time he saw Yash Chopra’s 1965 classic
Waqt. And in it he should concentrate on a dialogue written by Akhtar-Ul-Iman and spoken by Raj Kumar in the movie, which goes like this: “Chinoi Seth…jinke apne ghar sheeshe ke hon, wo dusron par pathar nahi feka karte(Chinoi Seth…those who live in glass houses don’t throw stones at others).”

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek) 

The column originally appeared on DailyO on May 4, 2015

Rahul Gandhi’s latest jai kisan rhetoric doesn’t quite work

rahul gandhiRahul Gandhi 2.0 is angry-and this anger is making him take ‘potshots’ at the Narendra Modi government almost every other day. Okay, I know it is politics. And I know that he is not angry. And I know that he is trying to rediscover himself. And I know that he is trying to ensure that the party of his ancestors doesn’t become totally irrelevant in the days to come.
Rahul’s latest jibe at the Modi government came yesterday when he said in Punjab: “Does the farmer not make in India?…Your government did nothing when hailstorms destroyed their crop?”
This after he had told a farmers’ rally in New Delhi earlier this month that: “We[i.e. the Congress led UPA government] increased the MSP of wheat from Rs 540 to Rs 1400…The MSP has not changed, no benefit to farmers.”
These statements are in line with the dole based politics and economics practised by the Congress party over the years. The trouble is the country has had to pay a huge cost for this. Allow me to explain. 

The MSP is the price at which the government buys rice and wheat from the farmers, through the Food Corporation of India (FCI) and other state government agencies. The MSP of rice was increased rapidly by the Congress led UPA government starting in 2007.
Between 2007 and 2014, the MSP of rice jumped up from Rs 580 per quintal to Rs 1310 per quintal, an increase of 12.34% per year. In case of wheat, the MSP started increasing from 2006 onwards. Between 2006 and 2014, the MSP of wheat jumped up from Rs 650 per quintal to Rs 1400 per quinta, an increase of around 10.1% per year.
The Table 1 shows the buffer stocks and the strategic reserves that the FCI needs to maintain at various points of time during the course of the year. 

Table 1


Now look at Table 2 which shows the stocks that FCI maintained at various points of time in 2014. A comparison of both the tables clearly tells us that FCI is stocking significantly more rice and wheat than what it is required to do. Interestingly, after the Narendra Modi led NDA government came to power, FCI has been going slow on procurement. In the earlier years the FCI was stocking even more than what it currently is. 

Table 2

As on 

Rice

Wheat

Total (in lakh tonnes)

Jan 1, 2014

146.98

280.47

427.45

April 1, 2014

202.78

178.34

381.12

July 1, 2014

212.36

398.01

610.37

Oct 1, 2014

154.22

322.63

476.85

Source: www.fciweb.nic.in


What the comparison of the two tables clearly tells us is that as the MSP prices have been increased, more and more rice and wheat have landed up with the government than what is required by it to run its various food programmes. In fact, the data clearly shows that before 2008 FCI bought as much rice and wheat as was required to maintain a buffer as well as a strategic reserve.
During and after 2008, the purchase of rice and wheat simply exploded. The reason for this is fairly straightforward. In the financial year 2008, the MSP of wheat was raised by 33.3%. In the financial year 2009, the MSP of rice was increased by 31.8%. And this led to farmers producing more rice and wheat in the years to come. This rice and wheat landed up with the government. FCI did not have enough space to store these grains and that explains why newspapers regularly carried pictures of rice and wheat rotting in the open, even though food inflation was rampant
The MSP policy run by the Congress led UPA government has now led to a situation where Indians farmers are producing more rice and wheat than what is required. In fact, influenced by this steady increase in the price of rice and wheat states like Punjab and Haryana, which have a water problem, are growing huge amount of rice and wheat. These crops are huge water guzzlers. Further, farmers are not growing enough of vegetables and fruits, where the prices have increased at a fast pace.
Also, when the government becomes dole oriented that leaves little money for it to do other things. At the end of the day there is only so much money that even a government has. As an editorial in The Financial Express points out: “This year, the government plans to spend around Rs 2.3 lakh crore on the food economy, including the food subsidy, and a very small fraction of this is for either crop insurance (imagine what that would do for farmers right now) or for creating irrigation facilities (imagine what that would do when the monsoon fails).”
Rahul Gandhi yesterday talked about the government not doing anything for the farmers after the hailstorms destroyed their crops. His government was in power for ten years what did they do on the crop insurance front? Why was the entire focus of the Congress led UPA government in making the farmer dependant on the government?
Interestingly, Rahul’s mother Sonia has written to the food minister Ram Vilas Paswan seeking a relaxation in the quality of wheat that the government buys from the farmers. As per the current regulations FCI does not buy wheat with a moisture content of greater than 14%. The Times of India reports Paswan as saying that: “permitting more moisture content beyond this level would mean the grain would be unfit for human consumption.” The newspaper also reports a food ministry official as saying: “There is no procurement of grains with more moisture content than the permitted limit. The procurement is being done as per the food safety standard law.”
This is a fair point. The government can’t be procuring wheat which is unfit for human consumption. Also, there is something majorly wrong in the state of the nation, where more than 65 years after independence, the main opposition leader suggests that the government buy wheat which is essentially not fit for human consumption.
This scenario would have never arisen if a crop insurance policy that covered a major section of the farmers had been in place. Who is to be blamed for this? Narendra Modi who came to power only 11 months back? Or the Congress party run by the Gandhi family which has been in power in each of the decades since independence? The answer is obvious.

The column originally appeared on The Daily Reckoning on Apr 30, 2015