every visa renewal is a time of extreme anxiety and stress for me. every time they ask for something new or find something wrong in the contract, or some regulation changed. you have to deal with staff who are sometimes unfriendly or impatient, and god forbid you miss a deadline or apply to early. it never feels like routine. my renewal times always seem to fall into the summer months when the kids have school holidays. at least once or twice our holiday travel plans were thwarted because of that.
One just has to learn to use actual encrypted chat (better than WhatsApp), encrypted containers, and Monero with no-log VPNs. Let them search all they want.
Disclaimer: I strongly and truly believe that everyone should pay a reasonable percentage of tax on their entire income.
There is no proof of torture to get the passwords for tax purposes. Even if guilt is assumed by the court, it will be for failing to comply with the investigation, not for hiding untaxed money. I guarantee you that failing to incriminate oneself for tax purposes will result in a far smaller fine and/or imprisonment if that, than will actually evading taxes.
The article notes:
> if a person is found to be in possession or control of any books of account, or other documents and information maintained digitally, on computer systems, or stored electronically, then they must provide the designated income tax officer “reasonable technical and other assistance (including access code, by whatever name called) as may be necessary” to enable the officer to inspect “any information, electronic records and communication or data contained in or available on such computer systems”.
> “In most of the cases of search operation the taxpayers do not share the password/login credential of online forums/portals/e-mail accounts, etc.
As above, the article already notes that the taxpayers do not share the passwords.
Disclaimer: I strongly and truly believe that everyone should pay a reasonable percentage of tax on their entire income.
We coerce and force people to relinquish passwords here in the US all the time. If you go through anything related to the border, that's run-of-the-mill. They don't even need a warrant for most of it, your fingerprint can be coerced out of you legally.
If a US citizen does not unlock the phone when entering the US, the phone can be seized while they send it to the lab to unlock it, and that's about it.
If the phone gets unlocked, the border police cannot coerce unlocking specific apps at all, although a judge can. The border police may however choose to lie about it.
Do you think that if a large portion of people jumped through these hoops that governments would just throw their hands up and be like, "Oh no they got us guys time to pack it up"?
> if a person is found to be in possession or control of any books of account, or other documents and information maintained digitally, on computer systems, or stored electronically, then they must provide the designated income tax officer “reasonable technical and other assistance (including access code, by whatever name called) as may be necessary” to enable the officer to inspect “any information, electronic records and communication or data contained in or available on such computer systems”.
> “In most of the cases of search operation the taxpayers do not share the password/login credential of online forums/portals/e-mail accounts, etc.
The article does not note what will happen when the defendant does not share the info. It is the best interest of the defendant to not share the info. It is very possible that the defendant will incur a small fine for non-compliance instead of a big fine for tax evasion, so it's still a favorable outcome.
I am not there, but necessity is the mother of invention, even at a social level.
Regarding your xkcd link, they cannot detain and torture you if you immediately get a court judge to grant bail or to toss the case. Those who do shady business should stay prepared.
Not that I like the government of India, but that person was charged under Terrorism act of India not Income tax.
Patriot Act and it's variants in US, India, UK all of them can and likely do allow govts to do just about anything. I think other countries probably have similar issues.
It is sad, horrid and corrupt but that's the system we live in. Can't really do much about it other than try to protest or support repealing such laws.
That's for the actual case, but at least bail can be issued without delay if I am not mistaken. It's up to the private attorney to have experience in these matters.
I'm from one of the most influential families in my state in India (the most educated in the country by the way), a (former) member of the ruling party in the state and living in one of the better parts of my district. And even I was detained by police for "loitering in the streets at night" (I had a midnight craving after being inordinately starved and my city shuts down at 9 pm). The only reason I did not spend a night in a jail cell was because I called my neighbour who called some local political honchos (not even my parents because they are utterly useless in such matters). All so that the police could wring a bribe out of me (which I ended up not paying). Meanwhile in other streets, drug peddlers run amok.
India is not for the faint-hearted, even for many Indians.
The comment suggesting torture (via the xkcd link) is also a very big IF. There is no proof of the existence of torture for such routine investigations.
The article notes:
> if a person is found to be in possession or control of any books of account, or other documents and information maintained digitally, on computer systems, or stored electronically, then they must provide the designated income tax officer “reasonable technical and other assistance (including access code, by whatever name called) as may be necessary” to enable the officer to inspect “any information, electronic records and communication or data contained in or available on such computer systems”.
> “In most of the cases of search operation the taxpayers do not share the password/login credential of online forums/portals/e-mail accounts, etc.
The article does not note what will happen when the defendant does not share the info. It is the best interest of the defendant to not share the info. Going forward, it is very possible that the defendant will incur a small fine for non-compliance instead of a big fine for tax evasion, so it's still a favorable outcome. There is no proof of torture or even imprisonment.
I don't agree with the bill, but I empathize with the motivation.
Infamously in the US, the IRS knows all. In India, the IRS runs blind. Here, tax evasion is the norm with only 2.2% of the population paying income tax.
> expanded scope of powers given to tax officials during search and seizure
For context, income tax raids are common in India. Officials tear down walls and ceilings to find hidden cash, jewels and other undeclared assets. Forcing their way into your phones is a digital equivalent. From a legal perspective, I don't see why digital spaces are anymore private than one's own house.
Yes, it limits freedoms. But, no more than than was the norm in a pre-internet India.
> Infamously in the US, the IRS knows all. In India, the IRS runs blind. Here, tax evasion is the norm with only 2.2% of the population paying income tax.
That's not true.
Every year you get emails to file IT returns, and they have all records of all foreign flights I took, forex transactions I made on my card etc. Everything is linked to your PAN and Aaadhaar. To be clear this is fine with me.
> For context, income tax raids are common in India. Officials tear down walls and ceilings to find hidden cash, jewels and other undeclared assets. Forcing their way into your phones is a digital equivalent. From a legal perspective, I don't see why digital spaces are anymore private than one's own house.
Fine. However this is an overreach since tax evasion is not as a big problem as it was a decade ago due to digitization.
Tax to GDP is still low at around 11%, but that's because much of the population isn't required to pay tax(no tax till 12k$ which is too generous, they should instead decrease PIT threshold and reduce consumption taxes).
hmm, this Economist article from earlier this month shows just how bad things are in India:
https://archive.is/bttaV
The last thing india needs is more bureaucracy and regulations and restrictions on personal freedoms (not to mention a free press which they've plummeted since the current PM's party took control).
India is just screwed. It is in this insane democratic autocratic hybrid where you don't get much freedoms but every government has to have a short term focus to win the next election and thus igniting caste/religion/other inflammatory issues.
Social media has caused this mass delusion where Indian problems can not even be discussed openly without being labelled a foreign agent or something worse. If you stop talking about the problems they don't just disappear.
For westerners, one quick thing you need to understand is that in India the written laws and constitution are totally irrelevant for day to day life, so the written law providing 100 freedoms is irrelevant. Anyone who has power can mostly do whatever they want to a large extent (offcourse there are limits basis how powerful they are). Just like in America it is said that the poor think of themselves as temporarily poor and rich someday, in India most people dream of gaining power and that sweet corruption money someday. People spend 5-10 years doing nothing but studying to get one of those sweet government jobs where bribes are universal and easily >5x your income.
Like in India everyone knows where black money is, well except the Government it seems. If the government had any interest in fixing tax avoidance they had many easy ways, but the Government is mostly interested in power.
> For westerners, one quick thing you need to understand is that in India the written laws and constitution are totally irrelevant for day to day life
Very important point. This explains how government use slick officials talking in english to address West in language of laws, norms, civilization, shared democratic values and things like that. All the while govt sanctioned/ supported elements do exactly opposite of what they claim to be doing when talking outside India.
The only thing changed in last 10-15 years is regime getting unusually sensitive to adverse foreign media coverage. Normally they resort to economic bullying of smaller nations to not utter a word which is not glowing praise of Indian regime. But for relations with West bullying may not work or can work against India so they are left with shrill whining on social platforms against western media.
So many sweeping generalizations, broad strokes and racist undertones in your comment. If you’ve led a middle class life in india, you’ll know most people don't dream of gaining power and sweet corruption money. They dream of honest work and pulling themselves out of poverty and being successful. The country has been wildly successful at this and has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty through economic liberalization and reforms, and has taken great strides in eliminating corruption through technology. Read about their mammoth push to get everyone a bank account and direct benefit transfers.
The people you allude to be dreaming of a cushy govt job that allows them to be corrupt is a tiny tiny % of their 1.3B population.
Most people do dream of gaining power and the sweet corruption money, whether they can or not is a different matter. Your comment is the perfect example of what I was alluding to, trying to have a discussion on India's problems gets you labelled for "racist undertones".
> and has taken great strides in eliminating corruption through technology.
Please enlighten me with one example. What great strides have been taken in eliminating corruption. Go to any small town and most prime real estate is owned by government servants. Go to a big city and most prime real esate is owned by politicians or their adjacent entities.
> Read about their mammoth push to get everyone a bank account and direct benefit transfers.
This just removes a very very small slice of the corruption pie. If this is the best example from a long time then things don't look good.
> The people you allude to be dreaming of a cushy govt job that allows them to be corrupt is a tiny tiny % of their 1.3B population.
Just look at the numbers of people studying for years for the various Government exams. It is not tiny by any means. And 1.3 B is not the right yardstick, but the number of youths in that age group.
I gave two examples. Direct Benefit Transfers & getting everyone bank accounts. They did reduce last mile corruption.
The people I allude to are a substantial portion of the population
>> Under Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), a national mission to ensure access to financial services, about 341 million accounts were opened between August 2014 and January 2019, with aggregate deposits of around US$12.5 billion as of January 2019. Of these accounts, 181 million were opened by women.
>> As of January 2019, 440 schemes covering farm and non-farm subsidies, social protection payments such as pensions and public workfare programmes, scholarships, academic fellowships, conditional cash transfers, and other government payments implement DBTs across 56 ministries, with Rupees (INR) 2,16,844 crores (US$ 2.1 trillion) transferred in total in 2018–19 (Direct Benefit Transfer Mission, Government of India Citation2019)
Please provide sources and data before, again, painting with racist broad strokes. I know the internet has a hate boner for India and anything the country it has done positively but please dont let the rhetoric blind you.
If you lived in India you’d know there are substantially more people joining the formal economy instead of lining up for govt exams.
There are cynical ways to look at this—which the opposition has pointed out in India— but this end result is net positive.
I think you might be underestimating the govt exam people though. People who work in government do know how rampant is corruption, the higher ups are more accountable and do curb on corruption by transferring once it gets caught , but a lot of corruption cases are silenced. Take the recent case of delhi justice, clear example of what I am speaking about, it's not that uncommon in govt on levels where's there more managerial competition for power and money.
The opposition is brainless at best and is a walking zombie with no notable leaders and leadership at helm.
The end result of DBT, UPI and other tech initiatives is a transformational positive and will form the bedrock of reforms and future growth.
The govt exam people, again, are a tiny tiny minority. For example - 1.1 million people took the country’s main Civil services exam that has a success rate of less than 0.1%. A vast majority of these 1.1M have no serious prep. To put this in context - India produces around 10 million graduates each other. Vast vast majority find employment in formal and informal sectors.
Govt corruption is a feature on India at this point. The economy has seen mid to high single digit GDP growth with it over the past few decades and will hopefully continue to grow to become a $10T and $20T economy over the next few decades with or without govt policy/reform tail winds and corruption head winds. So no, India is not screwed.
> Most people do dream of gaining power and the sweet corruption money
No. This is false. Most people just want a stable, peaceful life. People want their children to become: 1. Take their profession if it is cushy (profitable business, law practice, etc.) 2. Become a doctor, 3. Move abroad and become an academic/engineer, 4. Have a government job due to stability (most departments don't have any opportunity for corruption, where I live, people drool over becoming govt. High School teachers, which is a very chill job, yet tenured and stable, but 0 money under the table), 5. Have an IT job, 6. Become self-employed and earn big bucks, etc.
You are talking in extreme delusions.
> Go to any small town and most prime real estate is owned by government servants
This is so so wrong. Most land in small town are owned by relatively richer business-owners, who pays zilch in income taxes. In a small town, the richest people are the local bar owner, marble merchant, B2B traders, etc.
If govt. servants do have land, it is become they have very easily available loans, and have a stable, regular, increasing income for 20-30 years which also compounds when saved.
You are being too kind. Looking at other comments on this thread I feel there is an uncompromising and immovable hatred/racism against India and Indians. They feel India is perpetually flawed with no progress whatsoever and is screwed no matter what it does.
Yeah, you are right. Yes, what you say exists, and it is apparent in many comments here. But when writing my comment, I will assume no malice, only ignorance. Because, I don't want to go even close to being racist as an answer to racism.
India is making visible progress. The problem of corruption persists. That is the truth.
Two of the world's largest powers don't want India to rise and do better. And their rich and say in algorithms and propaganda machines is total and complete. People's perspectives are shaped by the major powers. So, I am not really surprised by such takes.
As an example, the propagandistic megaphone of an app controlled by one of India's adversaries. The algorithm of which is extremely biased on purpose, or tuned on purpose. It was laid bare during the most recent conflict India was involved in. I am also pretty sure that there are bot armies on X that, under fake profile, spread falsities about India. There is also one religious-political block on social media that hate India and is unrelenting in spreading falsehoods. The app was about to be banned in the US, but the kin of the Leader of the Free World received 300M USD in "investment" in their crypto firm.
The legacy media is not far behind. They highlight only the negative things. I remember when India landed on the moon, FT made a map, where they named USA, China, Russia, and "other countries" where it was only India.
I am too tired of these bot accusations, like it almost seems like everyone is using bots at this point, or majority of people are non-botted, accusing each other of using bots; sure some sides may be using it more or less than others,but I need some data for such claims which compares it with other sides, and puts it in proportion.
Honestly the FT thing might be automated, or more of a product of ignorance, majority of people as you have mentioned in your previous comments don't go hating some far off land which they're not in wars with.
I’m Australian by heritage, but have spent plenty of time in India and have more recently married and moved to India. The intense focus on getting government jobs (far beyond the point of irrationality, in my opinion, completely wasting years on a remote possibility), I can attest, from experience in West Bengal and Hyderabad, among lower- and middle-class Christians. But I wouldn’t say it need be about corruption: in fact, for many types of government jobs there’s not much opportunity for corruption (e.g. most of nursing). The biggest reason I’ve heard is the stability and certainty of a government job. My wife was once such a seeker for this reason.
As a private employee, you can be let go easily, whereas as a government employee, even dying may not lose you your job. I know a case where a man had a job in the post office, and died, and his widow was expected to inherit the job, and has done for five or ten years, although she is grossly incompetent at it (they would literally have done better to pay her twice as much to stay away).
This article in The Economist recently would tend to agree : "Why all Indians are rule-breakers [1]
"IF YOU HAVE ever relaxed with a cold Kingfisher beer at the end of a long, sweaty day in Mumbai, the party capital of India, you have almost certainly broken the law. Specifically, you violated section 40 of the Bombay Prohibition Act of 1949, under which you must hold a permit to drink booze. A first offence is punishable by a fine of 10,000 rupees ($115) and up to six months in prison.
Welcome to India, where everything is against the law."
> The state of Uttarakhand, to pick one, requires couples in live-in relationships to register (and pay a fee) within 30 days of shacking up. Failure to comply attracts a fine and up to three months in prison. What of love lost? The unhappy couple must de-register (and pay another fee).
The exact lunacies and irrationality that this Economist article describes are something that the Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto described in enormous detail in his book "The Other Path" (El Otro Sendero) roughly three decades ago when describing the at the time deeply dysfunctional aspects of regulatory administration in his native country, and in other Latin American states. He later wrote an abbreviated summary of the same findings in a book called "The Mystery of Capital".
Either way, (writing this purely from memory, so any mistakes entirely my own) his basic thesis was that states with massive informal markets and underdevelopment often far from having few laws, suffer from a grotesque surfeit of regulations, so many, so arbitrary, haphazard and irrational, that enforcing them all, or complying with them all, becomes completely impossible, and thus they're both enforced selectively, and adhered to selectively, based on convenience for either side of the equation. The result is widespread informality, a chronic inability to create formal capitalization that can be used in sophisticated ways for long-term economic development, and endemic tax evasion (not because almost everyone is a disgusting parasitic tax evader but because not evading while still trying to be entrepreneurial is nearly impossible).
EDIT: I can't speak for India, but in the country that I currently live in, Mexico, though things have improved in many ways for regulations around the basic process of starting a business or handling its financial paperwork, they're still totally inadequate for a vast portion of the working-age population, which includes dozens of millions of self-employed people who sustain themselves and a huge part of the economy entirely through informal service and product businesses that it would be extremely difficult for them to ever formalize. At the same time, without these businesses, run by these millions of people, the country's economy and social development would both collapse catastrophically.
Very worth reading, the books above, as warnings for any country and as solid analyses of how some countries lurch from economic disaster to economic disaster and never really develop effectively in a thorough way.
India is not destined to be screwed, but it will be screwed if it continues to do what it does.
You've misidentified the problem though.
Everything in India is against the law. This allows Indian government officials to selectively prosecute and enforce the law. This leads to chaos.
You can talk about how this is due to voter politics, or whatever.
But it's not.
It's due to Indian parenting which broadly follows the same model of everything being wrong.
As someone whose parents migrated from India to America, believe me, I know exactly how this works. This cultural trait is so embedded in Indian culture, but it is possible to eliminate.
> selectively prosecute and enforce the law ... Indian parenting model of everything being wrong. This cultural trait is so embedded in Indian culture, but it is possible to eliminate.
Can you expand on this, for better understanding by someone not familiar with this style of culture/parenting; and if you have any knowledge, does this also extend to Pakistani and Bangladeshi culture as well? Thanks
It is often truly the govt of many people in that sense, in the sense that the reason govt doesn't get rid of corruption is because 30-40% of population benefits from that corruption in some ways.
The article says that it can be done as part of search and seizure operations. And such an operation requires a search warrant. So I'm guessing not. However, the concern is that it may be used to extract information beyond what's relevant to income tax. Honestly, that isn't very farfetched because there have been allegations of planting incriminating evidence using the Pegasus malware. In comparison, a warrant isn't going to be much of a hurdle.
No, India has draconian laws about search and seizure (and one could argue, about a whole lot of other legal issues) when it comes to the Income Tax department. It doesn't require a judicial warrant, merely authorisation from a senior official in the Income Tax department (the list is given in the link posted below by another person.)
In practice, Income Tax "raids" have been used as instruments of oppression by governments of the day against political rivals, media outlets critical of the government, or pretty much any person they didn't like following a "the process is the punishment" philosophy. You have to justify every last thing. It's "guilty until proven innocent" when it comes the to Income Tax department in India.
They already could seize all your electronic equipment - phones, computers, etc. - as part of a raid and go through all your files to check if you were "evading income". These new amendments allow them to get even more draconian by compelling you to provide access to your email and social media accounts, which means you have absolutely zero privacy and evidence could even be planted on your accounts if needed. Of course, that would never happen because there is zero corruption in India. /s
It's pretty much going to move people to self-custodied crypto, whether to stablecoins or privacycoins or otherwise. Couple this with actual encrypted communications apps, well beyond WhatsApp, also encrypted containers. Let them search all they want.
Disclaimer: I strongly and truly believe that everyone should pay a reasonable percentage of tax on their entire income.
The ones who actually do intend to hide black money will definitely figure out the ways. You say "none of that is going to happen" because the need never registered to you yet. If you actually investigate you'll be shocked at how deep India's cybercriminal undergrounds run.
The ones who do actually have black money also have power and hence have nothing to worry here. Most of black money is with Government servant and politicians, so this is all irrelevant.
This is usually the case with onerous rules and regulations. Actual criminals have the means and motivation to work around any law. There will be a percentage of dumb/small criminals who will get caught, and the time and effort spent in catching them might not be worth it in the end. As usual, the common man who is honest and wants to follow rules will have to jump through hoops and hardships.
This isn't unique to India though.
This doesn't mean there shouldn't be laws and rules. Just that creating and enforcing the right level of rules and regulations isn't as straightforward as it sounds. Theft is theft, whether it is $10 or a Billion, but it would make sense to go after the dude who stole a Billion first, rather than the hungry dude who stole $10 for food. But the thief who stole a Billion has the smarts, motivation and means necessary to beat any laws
The biggest thief though is the government, as per the rate of inflation of their currency, due to much money they print every year, much of which is for their wasteful spending. What little value is left, they tax much of it away. This is why there is a righteous motivation to exit the government's money system.
I m sort of glad to see these overreaches happening. It's natural punishment for the carelessness with which people lived and shared their lives in global audience 24/7 for what is ultimately selfish and narcissist reasons. It's an insane society we live in, and nature self-corrects.
Everytime I regret moving abroad India makes sure I don't.
Also in today's HN: https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/column_social_media_e...
you are on a visa aren't you?. don't celebrate too hard. you may yet have to go back.
I don't think I necessarily would care that much if I have to go back. My mind would just as easily find issues on the other side as well.
wtf?
don't get so touchy on someone else's behalf. i am on a visa too. it's a daily reality for us.
every visa renewal is a time of extreme anxiety and stress for me. every time they ask for something new or find something wrong in the contract, or some regulation changed. you have to deal with staff who are sometimes unfriendly or impatient, and god forbid you miss a deadline or apply to early. it never feels like routine. my renewal times always seem to fall into the summer months when the kids have school holidays. at least once or twice our holiday travel plans were thwarted because of that.
[dead]
ok, that does change the context.
One just has to learn to use actual encrypted chat (better than WhatsApp), encrypted containers, and Monero with no-log VPNs. Let them search all they want.
Disclaimer: I strongly and truly believe that everyone should pay a reasonable percentage of tax on their entire income.
This sounds nice and great in theory, in practice this does nothing against:
1. Physical and / or psychological coercion to get at your passwords.
2. Suspicion that if you are using these tools you have something to hide and either assuming guilt or justifying 1.
There is no proof of torture to get the passwords for tax purposes. Even if guilt is assumed by the court, it will be for failing to comply with the investigation, not for hiding untaxed money. I guarantee you that failing to incriminate oneself for tax purposes will result in a far smaller fine and/or imprisonment if that, than will actually evading taxes.
The article notes:
> if a person is found to be in possession or control of any books of account, or other documents and information maintained digitally, on computer systems, or stored electronically, then they must provide the designated income tax officer “reasonable technical and other assistance (including access code, by whatever name called) as may be necessary” to enable the officer to inspect “any information, electronic records and communication or data contained in or available on such computer systems”.
> “In most of the cases of search operation the taxpayers do not share the password/login credential of online forums/portals/e-mail accounts, etc.
As above, the article already notes that the taxpayers do not share the passwords.
Disclaimer: I strongly and truly believe that everyone should pay a reasonable percentage of tax on their entire income.
We coerce and force people to relinquish passwords here in the US all the time. If you go through anything related to the border, that's run-of-the-mill. They don't even need a warrant for most of it, your fingerprint can be coerced out of you legally.
If a US citizen does not unlock the phone when entering the US, the phone can be seized while they send it to the lab to unlock it, and that's about it.
If the phone gets unlocked, the border police cannot coerce unlocking specific apps at all, although a judge can. The border police may however choose to lie about it.
Do you think that if a large portion of people jumped through these hoops that governments would just throw their hands up and be like, "Oh no they got us guys time to pack it up"?
The article notes:
> if a person is found to be in possession or control of any books of account, or other documents and information maintained digitally, on computer systems, or stored electronically, then they must provide the designated income tax officer “reasonable technical and other assistance (including access code, by whatever name called) as may be necessary” to enable the officer to inspect “any information, electronic records and communication or data contained in or available on such computer systems”.
> “In most of the cases of search operation the taxpayers do not share the password/login credential of online forums/portals/e-mail accounts, etc.
The article does not note what will happen when the defendant does not share the info. It is the best interest of the defendant to not share the info. It is very possible that the defendant will incur a small fine for non-compliance instead of a big fine for tax evasion, so it's still a favorable outcome.
That’s great and all, but if you have a wide social circle, and diverse interests etc, it’s quite hard to shun all mainstream services.
Honest question, have you really lived in India and seen how the local government society functions?
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/538/
I am not there, but necessity is the mother of invention, even at a social level.
Regarding your xkcd link, they cannot detain and torture you if you immediately get a court judge to grant bail or to toss the case. Those who do shady business should stay prepared.
>they cannot detain and torture you if you immediately get a court judge to grant bail or to toss the case.
That sounds like something that costs money.
> they cannot detain and torture you if you immediately get a court judge to grant bail or to toss the case.
First time? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidheeq_Kappan
Not that I like the government of India, but that person was charged under Terrorism act of India not Income tax.
Patriot Act and it's variants in US, India, UK all of them can and likely do allow govts to do just about anything. I think other countries probably have similar issues.
It is sad, horrid and corrupt but that's the system we live in. Can't really do much about it other than try to protest or support repealing such laws.
> Regarding your xkcd link, they cannot detain and torture you if you immediately get a court judge to grant bail or to toss the case.
The naiveté. You are letting your US centric vision cloud your judgement.
And even as a US centric vision, ice these days is getting away with some pretty questionable stuff
> they cannot detain and torture you if you immediately get a court judge to grant bail or to toss the case
I thought India was known for years-long waiting periods to make it into court.
That's for the actual case, but at least bail can be issued without delay if I am not mistaken. It's up to the private attorney to have experience in these matters.
Bro doesn't know India lol.
I'm from one of the most influential families in my state in India (the most educated in the country by the way), a (former) member of the ruling party in the state and living in one of the better parts of my district. And even I was detained by police for "loitering in the streets at night" (I had a midnight craving after being inordinately starved and my city shuts down at 9 pm). The only reason I did not spend a night in a jail cell was because I called my neighbour who called some local political honchos (not even my parents because they are utterly useless in such matters). All so that the police could wring a bribe out of me (which I ended up not paying). Meanwhile in other streets, drug peddlers run amok.
India is not for the faint-hearted, even for many Indians.
That's a very big IF doing the work there.
The comment suggesting torture (via the xkcd link) is also a very big IF. There is no proof of the existence of torture for such routine investigations.
The article notes:
> if a person is found to be in possession or control of any books of account, or other documents and information maintained digitally, on computer systems, or stored electronically, then they must provide the designated income tax officer “reasonable technical and other assistance (including access code, by whatever name called) as may be necessary” to enable the officer to inspect “any information, electronic records and communication or data contained in or available on such computer systems”.
> “In most of the cases of search operation the taxpayers do not share the password/login credential of online forums/portals/e-mail accounts, etc.
The article does not note what will happen when the defendant does not share the info. It is the best interest of the defendant to not share the info. Going forward, it is very possible that the defendant will incur a small fine for non-compliance instead of a big fine for tax evasion, so it's still a favorable outcome. There is no proof of torture or even imprisonment.
I don't agree with the bill, but I empathize with the motivation.
Infamously in the US, the IRS knows all. In India, the IRS runs blind. Here, tax evasion is the norm with only 2.2% of the population paying income tax.
> expanded scope of powers given to tax officials during search and seizure
For context, income tax raids are common in India. Officials tear down walls and ceilings to find hidden cash, jewels and other undeclared assets. Forcing their way into your phones is a digital equivalent. From a legal perspective, I don't see why digital spaces are anymore private than one's own house.
Yes, it limits freedoms. But, no more than than was the norm in a pre-internet India.
> Infamously in the US, the IRS knows all. In India, the IRS runs blind. Here, tax evasion is the norm with only 2.2% of the population paying income tax.
That's not true.
Every year you get emails to file IT returns, and they have all records of all foreign flights I took, forex transactions I made on my card etc. Everything is linked to your PAN and Aaadhaar. To be clear this is fine with me.
> For context, income tax raids are common in India. Officials tear down walls and ceilings to find hidden cash, jewels and other undeclared assets. Forcing their way into your phones is a digital equivalent. From a legal perspective, I don't see why digital spaces are anymore private than one's own house.
Fine. However this is an overreach since tax evasion is not as a big problem as it was a decade ago due to digitization.
Tax to GDP is still low at around 11%, but that's because much of the population isn't required to pay tax(no tax till 12k$ which is too generous, they should instead decrease PIT threshold and reduce consumption taxes).
They tried to decrease PIT threshold and got heavily criticised. The 12k$ is recent innovation to tackle that criticism.
hmm, this Economist article from earlier this month shows just how bad things are in India: https://archive.is/bttaV
The last thing india needs is more bureaucracy and regulations and restrictions on personal freedoms (not to mention a free press which they've plummeted since the current PM's party took control).
India is just screwed. It is in this insane democratic autocratic hybrid where you don't get much freedoms but every government has to have a short term focus to win the next election and thus igniting caste/religion/other inflammatory issues.
Social media has caused this mass delusion where Indian problems can not even be discussed openly without being labelled a foreign agent or something worse. If you stop talking about the problems they don't just disappear.
For westerners, one quick thing you need to understand is that in India the written laws and constitution are totally irrelevant for day to day life, so the written law providing 100 freedoms is irrelevant. Anyone who has power can mostly do whatever they want to a large extent (offcourse there are limits basis how powerful they are). Just like in America it is said that the poor think of themselves as temporarily poor and rich someday, in India most people dream of gaining power and that sweet corruption money someday. People spend 5-10 years doing nothing but studying to get one of those sweet government jobs where bribes are universal and easily >5x your income.
Like in India everyone knows where black money is, well except the Government it seems. If the government had any interest in fixing tax avoidance they had many easy ways, but the Government is mostly interested in power.
> For westerners, one quick thing you need to understand is that in India the written laws and constitution are totally irrelevant for day to day life
Very important point. This explains how government use slick officials talking in english to address West in language of laws, norms, civilization, shared democratic values and things like that. All the while govt sanctioned/ supported elements do exactly opposite of what they claim to be doing when talking outside India.
The only thing changed in last 10-15 years is regime getting unusually sensitive to adverse foreign media coverage. Normally they resort to economic bullying of smaller nations to not utter a word which is not glowing praise of Indian regime. But for relations with West bullying may not work or can work against India so they are left with shrill whining on social platforms against western media.
So many sweeping generalizations, broad strokes and racist undertones in your comment. If you’ve led a middle class life in india, you’ll know most people don't dream of gaining power and sweet corruption money. They dream of honest work and pulling themselves out of poverty and being successful. The country has been wildly successful at this and has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty through economic liberalization and reforms, and has taken great strides in eliminating corruption through technology. Read about their mammoth push to get everyone a bank account and direct benefit transfers.
The people you allude to be dreaming of a cushy govt job that allows them to be corrupt is a tiny tiny % of their 1.3B population.
Most people do dream of gaining power and the sweet corruption money, whether they can or not is a different matter. Your comment is the perfect example of what I was alluding to, trying to have a discussion on India's problems gets you labelled for "racist undertones".
> and has taken great strides in eliminating corruption through technology.
Please enlighten me with one example. What great strides have been taken in eliminating corruption. Go to any small town and most prime real estate is owned by government servants. Go to a big city and most prime real esate is owned by politicians or their adjacent entities.
> Read about their mammoth push to get everyone a bank account and direct benefit transfers.
This just removes a very very small slice of the corruption pie. If this is the best example from a long time then things don't look good.
> The people you allude to be dreaming of a cushy govt job that allows them to be corrupt is a tiny tiny % of their 1.3B population.
Just look at the numbers of people studying for years for the various Government exams. It is not tiny by any means. And 1.3 B is not the right yardstick, but the number of youths in that age group.
I gave two examples. Direct Benefit Transfers & getting everyone bank accounts. They did reduce last mile corruption.
The people I allude to are a substantial portion of the population
>> Under Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), a national mission to ensure access to financial services, about 341 million accounts were opened between August 2014 and January 2019, with aggregate deposits of around US$12.5 billion as of January 2019. Of these accounts, 181 million were opened by women.
>> As of January 2019, 440 schemes covering farm and non-farm subsidies, social protection payments such as pensions and public workfare programmes, scholarships, academic fellowships, conditional cash transfers, and other government payments implement DBTs across 56 ministries, with Rupees (INR) 2,16,844 crores (US$ 2.1 trillion) transferred in total in 2018–19 (Direct Benefit Transfer Mission, Government of India Citation2019)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09614524.2019.1...
Please provide sources and data before, again, painting with racist broad strokes. I know the internet has a hate boner for India and anything the country it has done positively but please dont let the rhetoric blind you.
If you lived in India you’d know there are substantially more people joining the formal economy instead of lining up for govt exams.
There are cynical ways to look at this—which the opposition has pointed out in India— but this end result is net positive.
I think you might be underestimating the govt exam people though. People who work in government do know how rampant is corruption, the higher ups are more accountable and do curb on corruption by transferring once it gets caught , but a lot of corruption cases are silenced. Take the recent case of delhi justice, clear example of what I am speaking about, it's not that uncommon in govt on levels where's there more managerial competition for power and money.
The opposition is brainless at best and is a walking zombie with no notable leaders and leadership at helm.
The end result of DBT, UPI and other tech initiatives is a transformational positive and will form the bedrock of reforms and future growth.
The govt exam people, again, are a tiny tiny minority. For example - 1.1 million people took the country’s main Civil services exam that has a success rate of less than 0.1%. A vast majority of these 1.1M have no serious prep. To put this in context - India produces around 10 million graduates each other. Vast vast majority find employment in formal and informal sectors.
Govt corruption is a feature on India at this point. The economy has seen mid to high single digit GDP growth with it over the past few decades and will hopefully continue to grow to become a $10T and $20T economy over the next few decades with or without govt policy/reform tail winds and corruption head winds. So no, India is not screwed.
> Most people do dream of gaining power and the sweet corruption money
No. This is false. Most people just want a stable, peaceful life. People want their children to become: 1. Take their profession if it is cushy (profitable business, law practice, etc.) 2. Become a doctor, 3. Move abroad and become an academic/engineer, 4. Have a government job due to stability (most departments don't have any opportunity for corruption, where I live, people drool over becoming govt. High School teachers, which is a very chill job, yet tenured and stable, but 0 money under the table), 5. Have an IT job, 6. Become self-employed and earn big bucks, etc.
You are talking in extreme delusions.
> Go to any small town and most prime real estate is owned by government servants
This is so so wrong. Most land in small town are owned by relatively richer business-owners, who pays zilch in income taxes. In a small town, the richest people are the local bar owner, marble merchant, B2B traders, etc.
If govt. servants do have land, it is become they have very easily available loans, and have a stable, regular, increasing income for 20-30 years which also compounds when saved.
You are being too kind. Looking at other comments on this thread I feel there is an uncompromising and immovable hatred/racism against India and Indians. They feel India is perpetually flawed with no progress whatsoever and is screwed no matter what it does.
Yeah, you are right. Yes, what you say exists, and it is apparent in many comments here. But when writing my comment, I will assume no malice, only ignorance. Because, I don't want to go even close to being racist as an answer to racism.
India is making visible progress. The problem of corruption persists. That is the truth.
Two of the world's largest powers don't want India to rise and do better. And their rich and say in algorithms and propaganda machines is total and complete. People's perspectives are shaped by the major powers. So, I am not really surprised by such takes.
As an example, the propagandistic megaphone of an app controlled by one of India's adversaries. The algorithm of which is extremely biased on purpose, or tuned on purpose. It was laid bare during the most recent conflict India was involved in. I am also pretty sure that there are bot armies on X that, under fake profile, spread falsities about India. There is also one religious-political block on social media that hate India and is unrelenting in spreading falsehoods. The app was about to be banned in the US, but the kin of the Leader of the Free World received 300M USD in "investment" in their crypto firm.
The legacy media is not far behind. They highlight only the negative things. I remember when India landed on the moon, FT made a map, where they named USA, China, Russia, and "other countries" where it was only India.
Do you expect any different in this setup?
I am too tired of these bot accusations, like it almost seems like everyone is using bots at this point, or majority of people are non-botted, accusing each other of using bots; sure some sides may be using it more or less than others,but I need some data for such claims which compares it with other sides, and puts it in proportion.
Honestly the FT thing might be automated, or more of a product of ignorance, majority of people as you have mentioned in your previous comments don't go hating some far off land which they're not in wars with.
I’m Australian by heritage, but have spent plenty of time in India and have more recently married and moved to India. The intense focus on getting government jobs (far beyond the point of irrationality, in my opinion, completely wasting years on a remote possibility), I can attest, from experience in West Bengal and Hyderabad, among lower- and middle-class Christians. But I wouldn’t say it need be about corruption: in fact, for many types of government jobs there’s not much opportunity for corruption (e.g. most of nursing). The biggest reason I’ve heard is the stability and certainty of a government job. My wife was once such a seeker for this reason.
As a private employee, you can be let go easily, whereas as a government employee, even dying may not lose you your job. I know a case where a man had a job in the post office, and died, and his widow was expected to inherit the job, and has done for five or ten years, although she is grossly incompetent at it (they would literally have done better to pay her twice as much to stay away).
[dead]
This article in The Economist recently would tend to agree : "Why all Indians are rule-breakers [1]
"IF YOU HAVE ever relaxed with a cold Kingfisher beer at the end of a long, sweaty day in Mumbai, the party capital of India, you have almost certainly broken the law. Specifically, you violated section 40 of the Bombay Prohibition Act of 1949, under which you must hold a permit to drink booze. A first offence is punishable by a fine of 10,000 rupees ($115) and up to six months in prison. Welcome to India, where everything is against the law."
[1] https://archive.is/ONfHw
One golden piece of wisdom from the above article
> The state of Uttarakhand, to pick one, requires couples in live-in relationships to register (and pay a fee) within 30 days of shacking up. Failure to comply attracts a fine and up to three months in prison. What of love lost? The unhappy couple must de-register (and pay another fee).
I mean this is indeed most important thing as opposed to minor issues like wholesale ecological destruction of mountains and rivers in Uttarakhand.
Laws like these come in handy when you have politically prosecute people.
The exact lunacies and irrationality that this Economist article describes are something that the Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto described in enormous detail in his book "The Other Path" (El Otro Sendero) roughly three decades ago when describing the at the time deeply dysfunctional aspects of regulatory administration in his native country, and in other Latin American states. He later wrote an abbreviated summary of the same findings in a book called "The Mystery of Capital".
Either way, (writing this purely from memory, so any mistakes entirely my own) his basic thesis was that states with massive informal markets and underdevelopment often far from having few laws, suffer from a grotesque surfeit of regulations, so many, so arbitrary, haphazard and irrational, that enforcing them all, or complying with them all, becomes completely impossible, and thus they're both enforced selectively, and adhered to selectively, based on convenience for either side of the equation. The result is widespread informality, a chronic inability to create formal capitalization that can be used in sophisticated ways for long-term economic development, and endemic tax evasion (not because almost everyone is a disgusting parasitic tax evader but because not evading while still trying to be entrepreneurial is nearly impossible).
EDIT: I can't speak for India, but in the country that I currently live in, Mexico, though things have improved in many ways for regulations around the basic process of starting a business or handling its financial paperwork, they're still totally inadequate for a vast portion of the working-age population, which includes dozens of millions of self-employed people who sustain themselves and a huge part of the economy entirely through informal service and product businesses that it would be extremely difficult for them to ever formalize. At the same time, without these businesses, run by these millions of people, the country's economy and social development would both collapse catastrophically.
Very worth reading, the books above, as warnings for any country and as solid analyses of how some countries lurch from economic disaster to economic disaster and never really develop effectively in a thorough way.
India is not destined to be screwed, but it will be screwed if it continues to do what it does.
You've misidentified the problem though.
Everything in India is against the law. This allows Indian government officials to selectively prosecute and enforce the law. This leads to chaos.
You can talk about how this is due to voter politics, or whatever.
But it's not.
It's due to Indian parenting which broadly follows the same model of everything being wrong.
As someone whose parents migrated from India to America, believe me, I know exactly how this works. This cultural trait is so embedded in Indian culture, but it is possible to eliminate.
> selectively prosecute and enforce the law ... Indian parenting model of everything being wrong. This cultural trait is so embedded in Indian culture, but it is possible to eliminate.
Can you expand on this, for better understanding by someone not familiar with this style of culture/parenting; and if you have any knowledge, does this also extend to Pakistani and Bangladeshi culture as well? Thanks
It is often truly the govt of many people in that sense, in the sense that the reason govt doesn't get rid of corruption is because 30-40% of population benefits from that corruption in some ways.
Ah what are they going to do with the information gained from my social media that I don't like dynamically typed languages and prefer SQL to NoSQL?
Since I can't read it (not disabling ad blocker), does this mean they can do it without the Indian justice system's equivalent to a warrant is?
The article says that it can be done as part of search and seizure operations. And such an operation requires a search warrant. So I'm guessing not. However, the concern is that it may be used to extract information beyond what's relevant to income tax. Honestly, that isn't very farfetched because there have been allegations of planting incriminating evidence using the Pegasus malware. In comparison, a warrant isn't going to be much of a hurdle.
For those interested: "Police Linked to Hacking Campaign to Frame Indian Activists"
https://www.wired.com/story/modified-elephant-planted-eviden...
No. Search and seizure (of which the social media search is now a part of) already needs a due process, but it is not exactly judicial.
https://cleartax.in/s/income-tax-raid
You need a stricter ad blocker. It is readable with js disabled.
No, India has draconian laws about search and seizure (and one could argue, about a whole lot of other legal issues) when it comes to the Income Tax department. It doesn't require a judicial warrant, merely authorisation from a senior official in the Income Tax department (the list is given in the link posted below by another person.)
In practice, Income Tax "raids" have been used as instruments of oppression by governments of the day against political rivals, media outlets critical of the government, or pretty much any person they didn't like following a "the process is the punishment" philosophy. You have to justify every last thing. It's "guilty until proven innocent" when it comes the to Income Tax department in India.
They already could seize all your electronic equipment - phones, computers, etc. - as part of a raid and go through all your files to check if you were "evading income". These new amendments allow them to get even more draconian by compelling you to provide access to your email and social media accounts, which means you have absolutely zero privacy and evidence could even be planted on your accounts if needed. Of course, that would never happen because there is zero corruption in India. /s
Comments like this make me wish HN had a comment pinning or star feature.
Not quite the same thing, but you can "favorite" comments
https://archive.ph/Vp27Z
It's pretty much going to move people to self-custodied crypto, whether to stablecoins or privacycoins or otherwise. Couple this with actual encrypted communications apps, well beyond WhatsApp, also encrypted containers. Let them search all they want.
Disclaimer: I strongly and truly believe that everyone should pay a reasonable percentage of tax on their entire income.
Yeah none of that is going to happen here except by maybe 1 in 10 million people.
The ones who actually do intend to hide black money will definitely figure out the ways. You say "none of that is going to happen" because the need never registered to you yet. If you actually investigate you'll be shocked at how deep India's cybercriminal undergrounds run.
The ones who do actually have black money also have power and hence have nothing to worry here. Most of black money is with Government servant and politicians, so this is all irrelevant.
This is usually the case with onerous rules and regulations. Actual criminals have the means and motivation to work around any law. There will be a percentage of dumb/small criminals who will get caught, and the time and effort spent in catching them might not be worth it in the end. As usual, the common man who is honest and wants to follow rules will have to jump through hoops and hardships.
This isn't unique to India though.
This doesn't mean there shouldn't be laws and rules. Just that creating and enforcing the right level of rules and regulations isn't as straightforward as it sounds. Theft is theft, whether it is $10 or a Billion, but it would make sense to go after the dude who stole a Billion first, rather than the hungry dude who stole $10 for food. But the thief who stole a Billion has the smarts, motivation and means necessary to beat any laws
The biggest thief though is the government, as per the rate of inflation of their currency, due to much money they print every year, much of which is for their wasteful spending. What little value is left, they tax much of it away. This is why there is a righteous motivation to exit the government's money system.
US does this too btw
Without a court order?
Have you heard of things like "Civil Assets Forfeiture"?
Where the USG sues the money and not you. And expects the money to defend itself?
Sure, but how does that relate to the topic of forcible access to email etc?
Are you familiar with Lavabit?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit
It may not be directly equatable, but it's pretty close. How many providers do you think just rolled over and we never heard from?
https://www.cbp.gov/travel/cbp-search-authority/border-searc...
Yes
[dead]
I m sort of glad to see these overreaches happening. It's natural punishment for the carelessness with which people lived and shared their lives in global audience 24/7 for what is ultimately selfish and narcissist reasons. It's an insane society we live in, and nature self-corrects.