Are we the worst people in the world?

People in other nations obey rules or they have to pay hefty fines, but Indians have no such culture wrote D Pattanaik. The Abrahamic religions followed by people in the Middle East and the West and Confucianism in China condition them to follow rules, in contrast with Hindus because, "There is no single Hindu ritual that all Hindus are expected to follow." Since all religions go back thousands of years one would expect discipline to be so ingrained in Western nations that fines should not be necessary. This disrespect for rules is apparently the reason that Indians cheat on income tax. "According to the Economic Survey, there are only 7 income tax payers for every 100 voters in India. This number is 100 for Sweden and Norway, and over 60 for USA. India is ranked near the bottom on a list of 55 countries," wrote A Ranade. In 2017, 93% of Indian households earned less than Rs 250,000 per year, which was the lowest threshold for paying income tax. Of these, 93.3% earn less than Rs 1 million per year. The threshold was raised to Rs 500,000 in the Budget on 1 February to persuade these low earners to vote for the BJP, the party of the Prime Minister. "No wonder politicians don't care about taxpayers as most of the votes come from non-payers," wrote Ranade. The reason why people are happy to pay taxes in Sweden is because taxes act as insurance premiums for medical benefits, child care and old age pensions. The same applies to Norway. All these countries also score very high on the index of happiness because they have no worries about dying in agony, because they cannot afford the high cost of treatment, or starving in old age. Also, the Indian government keeps changing rules to trap people. Thus, in 2004 the government abolished the long term capital gains tax (LTCG) on sale of shares and introduced a Securities Transaction Tax (STT), presumably because there will be no LTCG if share prices have fallen and the taxpayer booked a loss, whereas STT would be applicable on all share transactions. Last year the government reintroduced LTCG at 10%, so now people are having to pay double taxes on their investments in shares and mutual funds. The same tax is now applied to Equity Linked Savings Schemes which were sold for their tax savings. Since these schemes have a lock-in period of 3 years people are trapped. An analysis by Cleartax showed that taxpayers pay an average of Rs 20,000 in unnecessary taxes every year. Indians pay the highest rate of income tax up to an annual income of Rs 6 million but lower than the UK and Australia for those earning Rs 125-500 million. Warren Burrett famously claimed to pay a lesser rate of tax than his secretary. It is not that the people are cheating on paying taxes but they are getting trapped because the government keeps changing rules. And we get nothing for the taxes we pay. Indian households borrowed Rs 6.74 trillion in 2017-18, compared to Rs 3.77 trillion in 2014-15. We would not break rules if they were fair and consistent. Maybe, we are not the worst people in the world.