Prof Vidya Mahambare & Sowmya Dhanaraj compared data from National Family Health Survey (NHFS) from 2005-06 and 2015-16 to see the level of increase in possession of durable assets such as cars, computers, refrigerators, mobile phones, motorcycle/scooters, colour televisions and electric fans, among four social groups: Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC) and General Category (GC). Mint. Except for mobile phones which jumped from below 30% to around 90% in all four groups there was wide difference in possession of other assets. ST class was the worst off with only 2,7% owning a car, 3% owning a computer, 10.9% having a refrigerator, 25.5% owning a motorcycle/scooter, 43.7% owning a colour television and 54.7% owning electric fans. After 74 years of reservation for backward classes in government jobs, and higher education, pib.gov.in, and numerous subsidies to reduce poverty wikipedia, this level of deprivation is inexplicable. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been more liberal than previous Congress governments in handing out subsidies and schemes for the poor, Jagran Josh. "Despite there being 755 million internet users in India and the country being a hub of software talent whose engineers churn out billions of lines of code that keep Big Tech ticking, our so-called tech giants can barely measure up to either FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) or BATX (Baidu, AliBaba, Tencent and Xiaomi)," wrote Diva Jain. "While America and China have software champions, and Japan, Taiwan and South Korea have hardware champions, India, despite its bounteous market and human capital, is yet to give birth to a behemoth in either market." One reason might be that Big Tech companies have avoided paying tax by declaring their profits in tax havens, by a system called transfer pricing, ICRICT. In 2016, the European Commission (EC) found that the "Irish government granted illegal benefits to Apple and ordered it to recover 13 billion euros in unpaid taxes," CNBC. Both Ireland and Apple took the EC to court and won. Some have accused the FAANG giants of avoiding $100 of global taxes over the last decade, News18. In a recent meeting, the G7 countries agreed that, First, "rules will be made to ensure that companies pay more in the countries where they actually do business. The second was an agreement in principle to mandate a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15% to avoid countries undercutting each other." Tax saving allows companies like Google and Facebook to offer unlimited service to customers for free. "The deal refers only to very large firms (though what 'very large' entails is still unknown). It will also affect firms with a 10% annual profit margin and above," wrote Ronen Palan. Big firms could be broken up into smaller companies, as in the rise of 'shadow banks', to get round onerous banking regulations and, "Alternatively, the deal may encourage the techniques perfected by the Amazons of this world, using sophisticated accounting to grow in size under the guise of losing money," Economic Times (ET). In fact, "The 25 richest Americans, including Jeff Bazos, Michael Bloomberg and Elon Musk, paid relatively little -- and sometimes nothing -- in federal income taxes between 2014 and 2018, according to an analysis from the news organization ProPublica that was based on a trove of Internal Revenue Service tax data," Business Standard. Musk has privately funded SpaceX which uses reusable rockets to transfer astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, while Bazos has privately funded Blue Origin for sub-orbital spaceflight for space tourists, wikipedia. In India, telecom companies have to pay Rs 920 billion to the government in back taxes. NDTV, as part of their adjusted gross revenue (AGR) which means revenue from sources other than their telecom business and from sale of assets, The Indian Express. Indian millionaires have been trickling out of the country taking their business with them, BBC. Which means lesser taxes. No one wants to be terrorised, it seems.
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