{"id":3066,"date":"2011-12-08T08:09:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-08T02:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/?p=3066"},"modified":"2011-12-08T08:09:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-08T02:39:00","slug":"is-asking-for-taxes-an-assault-on-the-freedom-of-expression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/2011\/12\/08\/is-asking-for-taxes-an-assault-on-the-freedom-of-expression\/","title":{"rendered":"Is asking for Taxes an assault on the Freedom of Expression ?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Economic Times<\/p>\n<p>You are, allegedly,  a &#8216;respected business newspaper&#8217;. So, i am kind of surprised, though I shouldn&#8217;t be considering your parentage,  that you didn&#8217;t know &#8211; that transfer pricing is a shady practise that is considered illegal attracts penalties in most parts of the world. Including the world that you aspire to belong (the <em>gora <\/em>world). Why is it illegal, because it is a method of tax avoidance that deprives economies of tax revenues.<\/p>\n<p>What is <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.investorwords.com\/5051\/transfer_pricing.html\">Transfer Pricing<\/a><\/strong> &#8211; this is for the journalist who obviously is clueless about the term, as is the editor (does your paper still hire them?) who let the article pass. Transfer Pricing is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The price that is assumed to have been charged by one part of a company for products and services it provides to another part of the same company, in order to calculate each division&#8217;s profit and loss separately.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The largest accounting firms in the world have entire departments that help transnational corporations &#8211; companies that operate out of multiple countries and tax regimes &#8211;  sanitize <strong>transfer pricing. <\/strong>What does Transfer Pricing do? <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2009\/feb\/11\/taxavoidance-tax\">it <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>shift profits to low tax jurisdictions and avoid taxes in countries where corporations have substantial trading operations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, if the IT department sent a notice to Google, it may not b<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/economictimes.indiatimes.com\/tech\/internet\/google-india-gets-income-tax-dept-notice-for-not-revealing-correct-revenues\/articleshow\/11025572.cms\">e one grand conspiracy<\/a><\/strong> to curtail free speech, but a tax order.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For the assessment year 2008-09, the order says Google India has admitted revenue of only Rs 7.49 crore instead of showing the &#8220;correct revenue of Rs 167.32 crore&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Besides, no tax was deducted at source against the amount credited to Google Ireland. Based on the tax on the &#8216;gross income&#8217; and TDS, the department has made a claim of Rs 74 crore for the year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There is a serious amount of\u00a0difference\u00a0between the tax paid on 7.49 crores and 167.32 crores.<\/p>\n<p>While the opening paragraph is nice, juicy and sensational &#8211; and possibly will translate to screen well with the soundtrack of jackboots, it is possibly erroneous<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Around the same time Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal was planning to pull up Google, the Income-Tax Department was giving the final touches to a tax demand on the Indian arm of the global search engine company.&#8217;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The second paragraph sheds light on the picture better,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Google India Pvt Ltd, according to the tax office, has not offered its entire income for taxation and the profit and loss account filed by the company &#8220;does not give complete picture of the businesses&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The department has questioned Google India&#8217;s practice of paying tax on its &#8216;net&#8217; income from advertisements, after crediting a sizeable amount as distribution fees to Google Ireland. Google India runs the &#8216;Adwords&#8217; programme whereby advertisements that appear on its website are sold in India to Indian business establishments.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-style:normal;\">Companies, and people, pay taxes. Whether they like it or not. I don&#8217;t &#8211; either as an individual or a company relish the idea of paying taxes. But, I do. there is legal avoidance, and there is borderline evasion &#8211; it would be nice if facts are \u00a0before articles are published. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>It is nice to see the Government as the Big Bad Wolf &#8211; and it possibly is. But, in this case, it is highly likely that it is not censorship but genuinely tax avoidance.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style:normal;\">If the ET argued against the principle of tax in general, or why transfer pricing is a good business practise, I would be impressed, but this is just shoddy, biased and inaccurate \u00a0reporting (reportage is not supposed to be biased. that is the role of op-eds and columns &#8211; just a reminder).<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>btw &#8211; just a question. was that paid news, or was it erroneous because no one knew better ?<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p><strong>declaration<\/strong> &#8211; i don&#8217;t normally read the ET. But, saw a whole bunch of otherwise rational people go into a hand wringing mode on the tax order. I hate paying taxes too, can i claim that since i oppose Governmental stupidity, i should be exempt from my tax liability ?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Economic Times You are, allegedly, a &#8216;respected business newspaper&#8217;. So, i am kind of surprised, though I shouldn&#8217;t be considering your parentage, that you didn&#8217;t know &#8211; that transfer pricing is a shady practise that is considered illegal attracts penalties in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23,27,31,36,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-india","category-media","category-news-media-2","category-propaganda","category-society"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Is asking for Taxes an assault on the Freedom of Expression ? - A PoV<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/2011\/12\/08\/is-asking-for-taxes-an-assault-on-the-freedom-of-expression\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is asking for Taxes an assault on the Freedom of Expression ? - A PoV\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dear Economic Times You are, allegedly, a &#8216;respected business newspaper&#8217;. 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