Monday, February 23, 2009

Toll Free?

Had a pleasure trip last week towards ECR with my family..Enjoyable to the max but the journey of 150 Kilometers from my hometown to ECR, chennai took me across five toll gates.....yes five toll gates and a cool 150 around bucks to get thru all of them....Really odd to find out that taxing the few, more and more seems to be the mantra now!
If you are an indian tax payer, you wonder if anybody is paying more than you in the whole planet....Tax on all food items purchased (all our super-duper departmentals have no choice), tax on phone bills, electricity, water, house, vehicle registration tax, insurance, roadtax, toll tax, to even tax on eating your favourite sandwiches to teas....plus on the official front, professional tax, income tax, fringe benefits (which bird goes by that name is anybody's guess) and whatever you have left and want to spend, you cant do a single penny officially without paying an associated tax, unless you were indulging on a road-side dhaba or some non-fancy restaurant (namma hotel maams aka bismillah hotel or something), be ready to be taxed...
If all that is scary, there is more to come when you even think of starting a simple business...you cant sell a single biscuit packet without paying a tax....what with all the STPI and SEZ, its common middle class guys like us who bears the brunt of this skewed taxing rules....after all this the finance minister gives a breakdown and claims that 20% of our national income comes by debt....if only there is an end of corruption...!!Ah!
No wonder the rich dont pay, ( they only deposit offshore in some tax-haven), the poor dont have a means to pay....its only us who are left to fend for ourselves....Hope some sensible finance minister coems into the cabinet next time and takes a realistic approach to solve our taxing tax.....




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