[mallumowgli]

Originally Posted by civic-sense

Any money taken from you without your consent is theft, even if it has a nice name called "tax". If it was voluntary, nobody would pay tax. So even if you paid all your taxes, if you did it because of compulsion, it is still theft.

Actually, we didn't sign up for any of these. We are forced to pay up because we can't live here without paying. We pay disproportionate amount of taxes when compared with the benefit we get out of it. Most of our tax money is spent on wasteful things like subsidizing other people's lifestyle.

Consent is there. This is a democracy and tax is imposed by the government. If you are able to get a buy in from the majority population that the taxes are not required and you are going to pay for all the services, however small it may be (water, electricity, education, health care etc) - then perhaps we may have a tax less regime

[civic-sense]

Roads are the statist excuse for a fleecing government. Roads came first, and then governments and taxation. It is worthwhile quoting Stefan Molyneux here:

It’s been easier to convince people to hand over half their income, their children to war, and their freedoms in perpetuity, than to engage them in seriously considering how roads might function in the absence of taxation.

Moreover even if you consider roads as something only governments can build, why should it be that roads should come packaged with other wasteful expenditures. That you need roads do not justify the latter.

[tbppjpr]

One of the primary logic given behind imposing the demonetisation was that the creating counterfeit notes of the new currency notes will not be easy. Now fake currency jumped up by 480% and stands at record all time high.

Demonetisation led to highest fake currency, suspicious transactions: Report

[sgiitk]

Originally Posted by tbppjpr

One of the primary logic given behind imposing the demonetisation was that the creating counterfeit notes of the new currency notes will not be easy. Now fake currency jumped up by 480% and stands at record all time high.

480% wrt what? Nothing unusual in counterfeiting dropping till the channels were reestablished. It did result in reduction in disruption in J&K for some time. Now it is 'business as usual'.

[StarrySky]

Originally Posted by tbppjpr

One of the primary logic given behind imposing the demonetisation was that the creating counterfeit notes of the new currency notes will not be easy. Now fake currency jumped up by 480% and stands at record all time high.

As per the report, the 400% jump is for suspicious transaction reports (STR). Also from the report:

The STRs, that are generated when a transaction either indicates that it has been made in circumstances of unusual or unjustified complexity or appears to have no economic rationale or bona fide purpose, also saw a record high rate of detection during the same period and an over 400 per cent jump from the comparative period just before demonetisaton.

STRs are not linked to fake currency alone. In my view, it is the success of demonetization that more STRs are generated.

Coming to counterfeit currency, the report says:

"A noteworthy growth was also seen in the number of counterfeit currency reports (CCRs) which increased from more than 4.10 lakh in 2015-16 to over 7.33 lakh in 2016-17, which may also be attributed to the demonetisaton exercise," it said.

The increase in this case is around 75%. The report actually doesn't specify whether old or new counterfeit notes led to the increase. The report only says that the detection of counterfeit notes jumped in FY16-17 compared to FY15-16. This is not very surprising, as demonetization would've forced many to bring the old 500, 1000 notes that they held (legitimately or not) to the bank in some way or another and quite a lot of them might have turned out to be fake.

I am not saying that new notes cannot be counterfeited (indeed they have been), but your post and the article you quoted don't match.

[sgiitk]

@SrarrySky; I tend to mostly agree with you. Our media is in the habit of going off on a tangent, and also take any 'foreign' source as gospel truth. So take any such reports with a pinch of salt.

Now it seems that reports filed officially were also faked.

[tbppjpr]

Originally Posted by StarrySky

In my view, it is the success of demonetization that more STRs are generated.

Then I guess Nirva Modi's transactions also must be part of it. So it's a success that he fled, instead of getting caught? What a success!

Originally Posted by sgiitk

Our media is in the habit of going off on a tangent, and also take any 'foreign' source as gospel truth. So take any such reports with a pinch of salt.

So you want to say 'Financial Intelligence Unit India', which is an Indian government body, is foreign source?

I wonder what is the Indian source then?


Here is the full report:
http://fiuindia.gov.in/pdfs/download...ort2016-17.pdf


Screenshot from the report:

[DigitalOne]

The statistics shown are for 2016-17 i.e. till March 31st 2017.

Originally Posted by tbppjpr

Then I guess Nirva Modi's transactions also must be part of it. So it's a success that he fled, instead of getting caught? What a success!

Nirav Modi's came to light in Jan 2018. I guess that doesn't get reported in a 2016-17 report.

Attachment 1754319


Attachment 1754345

Demonetization was announced on Nov 8th, 2016. In just 4.5 (Nov to March) months it is almost impossible that counterfeiters produced so many fake new 2000 rs and new rs 500 notes. Also take into consideration that for the first couple of months after demonetization, new 500 notes were not generally available.

It is thus clear that a rush of old 500 and 1000 fake currency was deposited back into banks in the first few weeks following demonetization.

[pratyush6]

Well RBI finally counted all the 500 & 1000 Notes that were returned back except those of Co-operative Banks. As we feared towards the later part of the story, atleast 99.3% of the currency was returned.

It's safe to say, that the exercise was a disaster at best or a planned benefit scheme for a sinister motive for some at worst. Over 140 dead in queues, near annihilation of the small and medium scale industry. It quite frankly is among the worst decisions of modern India, but to expect the once teary faced PM to say sorry or apologise for it; is a bit too much I suppose. Who gives a damn about common people?

[deathwalkr]

Call me dumb but isn't getting all of that cash back into the system a good thing? And all that cash need not be white. The tax authorities will be on the case for years to come and many will have to pay the penalties.

Was it worth it? In the long run i sure hope it will be. More people will pay their taxes and from what i hear real estate dealings in black have really come down with many unwilling even to accept cash.

Too many tangents of arguments and multiple threads to pluck at.

All in all, it's one big mess

[ajmat]

One thing that is not clear is how much additional tax has been collected?

[earthian]

Originally Posted by deathwalkr

Call me dumb but isn't getting all of that cash back into the system a good thing?

You are not dumb. In addition, an electronic trail for most of the money has been established. Todays news talks about 60% jump in tax filings.

The bad news is that cash transactions have again started and is steadily increasing. Some say it is as good (bad?) as it was before. Real estate is down due to many reasons and demo was sort of another nail in the coffin. RERA would be the prime culprit ( or saviour-depending on which side of the fence you are).

[longhorn]

Originally Posted by deathwalkr

Call me dumb but isn't getting all of that cash back into the system a good thing? And all that cash need not be white. The tax authorities will be on the case for years to come and many will have to pay the penalties.

Can you specify any tangible benefits we have obtained from demonetisation, keeping aside the rosy picture painted by the govt. People who had hoards of cash stashed away, got it exchanged without routing it through their bank accounts, which means, there is absolutely no way of tracing the source and destination of this money, which also means there is no way the income tax department can get hold of them specifically through the demonetisation initiative. If anyone actually gets caught, it will only be those dumbos who, out of ignorance, allowed their jan dhan accounts to be used to convert someone else's money. Remember, the big fish is not anywhere in the picture, so their is actually no proof against the big fish.

It was only the common citizen, the aam aadmi, who had to stand in queue like beggars to deposit / exchange / withdraw their hard earned money, which the government in their infinite wisdom, decided that no one should require more than Rs 2000 per day? This itself shows how ill prepared the government itself was for this.

Originally Posted by deathwalkr

Was it worth it? In the long run i sure hope it will be. More people will pay their taxes and from what i hear real estate dealings in black have really come down with many unwilling even to accept cash.

Too many tangents of arguments and multiple threads to pluck at.

All in all, it's one big mess

Demonetisation was the biggest blunder committed by an elected government in India's history. Period. Other than about 140 losing their lives and putting the common man through untold hardship and messing up the GDP, nothing worth the while has come out of this. RBI has saved their face by accepting what was known in Jan / Feb of 2017 itself and putting an end to the so called uncertainity. Nothing has been achieved from demonetisation which could not be otherwise achieved through more subtle ways, if the income tax department actually wanted to do it.

EDIT : If this was the USA, I'm pretty sure the man responsible for this would have been impeached by now, but this is India so you don't have to take any responsibility for the mess you make. If the person who announced this on the night of November 8th 2016 had an iota of shame in him, he should have hung his head in remorse and resigned.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Originally Posted by longhorn

Demonetisation was the biggest blunder committed by an elected government in India's history.

Agree.

Was one of those who thought that a few days of hardships might lead to something better. But I don't see any benefits that really lived up to the hype created to justify those hardships.

Meanwhile - common man continues to be taxed more than ever, petrol continues to be taxed at its highest ever, political spends by the govt still continues in various forms (statues, tours, special packages for vote bank states) etc.

Only real positive I see around me is that some middle level rich people were caught in the events, and later brought into the taxable system. Couldn't really touch the ultra rich business and political class who bypassed all this through various loopholes.

[avira_tk]

Originally Posted by earthian

You are not dumb. In addition, an electronic trail for most of the money has been established. Todays news talks about 60% jump in tax filings.

The bad news is that cash transactions have again started and is steadily increasing. Some say it is as good (bad?) as it was before. Real estate is down due to many reasons and demo was sort of another nail in the coffin. RERA would be the prime culprit ( or saviour-depending on which side of the fence you are).

The electronic trail leads to nowhere in the case of the big fish. Shell companies used have been struck off by the ROC, the tax department is fighting the MCA notification, go figure who that move benefitted. The vast majority of fillings are subject to refund, accumulated cash not income earned in the financial year of declaration. The salaried class in the private sector is hit by inflation and higher tax demands, service inflation is through the roof.