Do it yourself

  In the past fifteen years, the pre-budget narratives in India have always included discussions on the reimposition of Estate Duty (inheritance tax). The finance ministers, policy-makers, bureaucrats, economic thinkers, and members of the party think tanks, have all spoken about it and emphasized the need for such a tax in a country like India that has massive socioeconomic inequalities; poor GDP-to-Tax ratio; and significant fiscal, monetary, & social/sustainability concessions for entrepreneurs who ought to repay to the society after attaining a certain scale. In the past few years, I have seen numerous wealthy families worrying about Estate Duty and making plans to preempt it. Some of the richest families in the country have relocated their wealth offshore to more convenient tax jurisdictions like Singapore, UAE, Luxemburg, etc., in anticipation of the imposition of Estate Duty or Inheritance Tax in some form. Estate Duty has however not been an election issue ever sinc...

One of the distinct childhood memories is about the Uncle, who used to visit foreign countries for work almost every year. After every foreign visit, he would host a family dinner. At the gathering he would explain the difference between heaven (Europe and USA) and hell (India). He would make every adult regret for taking birth in India and make every child aspire to settle abroad. We (me and my brother) were usually not interested in what Uncle is saying. Our interest was limited to the last act – opening of goodies bag post dinner. He would very generously distribute the “gifts” he had brought from “foreign”. These gifts would invariably include – bathroom sleepers, shaving and dental kits, cosmetics and writing instruments picked from the hotel room he had stayed and flight he had travelled; bottles of perfume; some clothes; small toys; and souvenirs, mostly bought from dollar stores (this I know in hindsight after travelling myself). Three essential things were bottles of liquor ...