The signal may still be red. But if vehicles have started moving, they will keep honking and hurling abuses at you for not moving and breaking the rules along with you.
**Time for a thread**
Through the last three years of experience in the entrepreneurship space, I understood why phenomenons like
- black money
- hawala
- money laundering
- tax fraud
- overclaiming of tax returns
- not reporting income
and other such scenarios exist.
The signal may still be red. But if vehicles have started moving, they will keep honking and hurling abuses at you for not moving and breaking the rules along with you.
The government employees seek bribe for every single thing that they are being paid to do as work.
If you don't pay them, your business will not get set up.
If you don't pay what they ask for, they will point out hundred issues.
You unwittingly become an accomplice to the systemic corruption.
If you don't bribe, your business won't get off the ground and you can't make money.
So, you are cornered to have to pay a bribe.
You go to MSME. They get you the loan. They also provide subsidy relief.
The catch: The officer asks you to pay 10-15% of subsidy as "formality" to ministers and the chain of command.
Every single department in some form or other takes bribe during your lifetime. From EB to service tax department, they do this.
If you don't pay up, they will block your business in some way or the other.
GST goes up to 18%. If you're in F&B / restaurant business, you can't even claim ITC.
You pay a good chunk of what you collect as GST.
Apart from this, you also regularly pay other small small taxes - property tax, water tax, land tax, and so on.
Let's consider a conservative 18% on your returns stuck with IT department.
You lose on that too.
The CM of the state gives the Commissioner a quota for collection for the year. They have to meet that quota.
And at each level the different government department and each person responsible keeps a margin for themselves for the risk they take.
He then distributes the quota to different branches. Traffic, crime, civil, etc.
The traffic police who grab hold of middle class people and charge them fines and bribes - that's for this quota.
If EB, the EB guys find the biggest income generators of the area and go tell them they have to pay x amount per month for the year.
This I learnt from an audit intern working on their last FY audit.
If they don't pay, the EB authorities will act.
Big businesses strategically take advantage of you. They ask for credit, and then don't honor the credit. Some purposefully default your payments.
When you go to MSME, they don't pick up your case for long.
Big businesses and unethical owners know this and take advantage of small businesses that can't afford a legal fight.
On the other end of all this is the biggest legalized organized mafia in the world - government.
Even if you register a case against state gov departments, it usually gets discarded.
Sometimes the inflation is crazy. So, 1 lakh in 2015 is only worth like 85k in 2020.
Businesses lose on a compounding manner VERY BIG in this inflation related losses too. More details in this thread:
https://t.co/SMtGhzmLg0
1/
— 10-K Diver (@10kdiver) November 28, 2020
Get a cup of coffee.
In this thread, I'll help you understand the relationships between *investing* and *inflation*. pic.twitter.com/8KKApyc6vU
If they are not making money after so much efforts, and only enriching everyone else (their landlords, gov orgs, vendors, customers, etc.), they will quit their business and go get a job.
Let's take a look at what the government does with all the money they collect as taxes.
It gives humongous loans to fraudulent people and declare thousands of crores as NPAs.
It lets those frauds roam scot-free in foreign countries.
It then prints money and recapitalises such banks giving out money to frauds.
Banks run because we park money there. Not the other way around. They earn from our money and giving loans from our deposits.
But you get 10,000 crore loan, even if you don't pay, you get VIP treatment.
But why?
What's even the point when so many people are under the poverty line, and don't even have a basic gas facility?
Bhakts will say "tourism revenue".
Covid happened, and government didn't provide much relief.
The entire 20L Cr package was all a bunch of hogwash. On top of that government took donations.
What happened to those donations? No one knows.
Nope.
Drainage isn't maintained.
Garbage collection is not regular.
Roads are with potholes.
"If I have to shed blood, sweat, and tears for all the pigs to sit and eat, I might as well take my fair share of money. "
- Not declaring bills here and there.
- Getting cash payments and converting it to gold in the grey market.
- Holding an account in wife or mother's name where they don't file any taxes.
- Buying property using benami's.
- Accounting smarts. Some minor accounting adjustments here and there.
- Setting up a holding company and showing non-existing transactions for travel, and other such claims.
- Utilizing some of the legal ways to reduce taxes and slightly illegal ways too.
The amount they have to pay illegally also increases. They don't want to, but they have to.
So they move on to bigger ways of taking as much of their money away from government.
We see 0.000001% of these in news.
Every single company out there that's successful has fixed books and accounts to their convenience, to save every single penny. Very few get caught.
When parties/regime/leadership change, favorites are played, and unfavorables are taken out.
IT department plays the queen while the government plays the king. You're the pawn.
Business owner and group strategically extracts money from government higher than the proportion they paid.
They collude with bankers to accomplish this.
When a businessman comes along and pays 10c to get a LOG for 1000C, who would reject?
Some of these people become Mallaiya's and Choksey's.
Some become Ambani's and Birla's.
You have no idea what his illegal net worth is. He may be richer than Bezos and Warren Buffett and even Putin in reality. You'd never know.
That's why he's the kingmaker. His money can sway elections and turn governments.
Nobody goes to jail.
All of that then comes and drains down the heads of middle class honest salary earners and job goers.
Nope.
Budgets are a joke.
On non election years, they are to appease the big guys and corporates giving the party money.
On election years, it's to appease the illiterates who vote for anyone giving 5000 rupees.
You can't run a honest business and become big.
Every single big corporate you see does something wrong and illegal. Including public companies.
You're just not smart enough to notice those.
The Big-4 are responsible too.
Yet those big-4 auditors stand tall and help businesses take money away from government.
And you HAVE to take advantage of the loopholes you can take advantage of, legally.
Otherwise, you have to accept either not scaling your business and stay small. Or you'll have to just shut your business down and go to a regular job.
You think Modi's total net worth is only 2.5 odd crores? What a joke!
He definitely has so much more in undeclared and illegal net worth. I'd say he's as rich as some of the richest businessmen in Chennai.
More from Shravan Venkataraman 🔥🚀💰
In today's round up, I have some amazing threads, resources, and plenty of solid advice for business, finance, career from twitter.
Here's the roundup of 17 of the best and the most useful threads, tweets, and resources I found last week. 🧵
1/ How to find spreadsheets on any topic in the
2/ A thread by @wes_kao on making your customers hungry and excited to buy from
3/ Life brings you a lot of afflictions. But if you look around, there's a lot of beauty around you. Most often, drowning in the afflictions, we can't recognise or appreciate the beauty.
@wdmorrisjr wrote a damn good thread on finding beauty around us.
4/ This one is for all the job goers and job seekers.
@SahilBloom who recently hit 500k followers and has several accomplishments to his belt (career wise) wrote this thread on standing out in a hiring
Here's the roundup of 17 of the best and the most useful threads, tweets, and resources I found last week. 🧵
1/ How to find spreadsheets on any topic in the
How to find spreadsheets on any topic in the world:
— Blake Emal (@heyblake) February 13, 2022
1. Go to Google
2. Search site:docs(dot)Google(dot)com/spreadsheets \u201cYOUR TOPIC\u201d
3. Search, scroll, succeed pic.twitter.com/VJsYQKyi0J
2/ A thread by @wes_kao on making your customers hungry and excited to buy from
How to get customers excited, hungry to buy, and ready to say yes:
— Wes Kao \U0001f3db (@wes_kao) February 13, 2022
3/ Life brings you a lot of afflictions. But if you look around, there's a lot of beauty around you. Most often, drowning in the afflictions, we can't recognise or appreciate the beauty.
@wdmorrisjr wrote a damn good thread on finding beauty around us.
You\u2019re not looking for more success, stuff, or sex.
— David Morris (@wdmorrisjr) February 13, 2022
You\u2019re searching for beauty.
Here\u2019s how to find it: \U0001f9f5
4/ This one is for all the job goers and job seekers.
@SahilBloom who recently hit 500k followers and has several accomplishments to his belt (career wise) wrote this thread on standing out in a hiring
10 ways to stand out in a hiring process (that don\u2019t involve your resume):
— Sahil Bloom (@SahilBloom) February 13, 2022
You May Also Like
THIS.
Russia hasn't been a willing partner in this treaty for almost 3 decades. We should have ended the pretense long ago.
Naturally, Rand Paul is telling anyone who will listen to him that Trump is making a HUGE MISTAKE here.
Rand is just like his dad, Ron. 100% isolationist.
They've never grasped that 100% isolationist is not 'America First' when you examine it. It really means 'America Alone'.
The consistent grousing of pursuing military alliances with allies - like Trump is doing now with Saudi Arabia.
So of course Rand has also spent the last 2 days loudly calling for Trump to kill the arms deal with Saudi Arabia and end our alliance with them.
What Obama was engineering with his foreign policy was de facto isolationism: pull all the troops out of the ME, abandon the region to Iranian control as a client state of Russia.
Obama wasn't building an alliance with Iran; he was facilitating abandoning the ME to Iran.
Obama wouldn't even leave behind a token security force, so of course what happened was the rise of ISIS. He also pumped billions of dollars into the Iranian coffers, which the Mullah's used to fund destabilizing activity [wars/terrorism] & criminal enterprises all over the globe
Russia hasn't been a willing partner in this treaty for almost 3 decades. We should have ended the pretense long ago.
Naturally, Rand Paul is telling anyone who will listen to him that Trump is making a HUGE MISTAKE here.
Arms control agreements are good when you have willing partners. Lightens the load on our military.
— John Noonan (@noonanjo) October 20, 2018
Russia hasnt been a willing partner in years. There will be gnashing of teeth from people who do arms control advocacy full time, but this is right movehttps://t.co/WmQE43ERCB
Rand is just like his dad, Ron. 100% isolationist.
They've never grasped that 100% isolationist is not 'America First' when you examine it. It really means 'America Alone'.
The consistent grousing of pursuing military alliances with allies - like Trump is doing now with Saudi Arabia.
So of course Rand has also spent the last 2 days loudly calling for Trump to kill the arms deal with Saudi Arabia and end our alliance with them.
What Obama was engineering with his foreign policy was de facto isolationism: pull all the troops out of the ME, abandon the region to Iranian control as a client state of Russia.
Obama wasn't building an alliance with Iran; he was facilitating abandoning the ME to Iran.
Obama wouldn't even leave behind a token security force, so of course what happened was the rise of ISIS. He also pumped billions of dollars into the Iranian coffers, which the Mullah's used to fund destabilizing activity [wars/terrorism] & criminal enterprises all over the globe
"I really want to break into Product Management"
make products.
"If only someone would tell me how I can get a startup to notice me."
Make Products.
"I guess it's impossible and I'll never break into the industry."
MAKE PRODUCTS.
Courtesy of @edbrisson's wonderful thread on breaking into comics – https://t.co/TgNblNSCBj – here is why the same applies to Product Management, too.
There is no better way of learning the craft of product, or proving your potential to employers, than just doing it.
You do not need anybody's permission. We don't have diplomas, nor doctorates. We can barely agree on a single standard of what a Product Manager is supposed to do.
But – there is at least one blindingly obvious industry consensus – a Product Manager makes Products.
And they don't need to be kept at the exact right temperature, given endless resource, or carefully protected in order to do this.
They find their own way.
make products.
"If only someone would tell me how I can get a startup to notice me."
Make Products.
"I guess it's impossible and I'll never break into the industry."
MAKE PRODUCTS.
Courtesy of @edbrisson's wonderful thread on breaking into comics – https://t.co/TgNblNSCBj – here is why the same applies to Product Management, too.
"I really want to break into comics"
— Ed Brisson (@edbrisson) December 4, 2018
make comics.
"If only someone would tell me how I can get an editor to notice me."
Make Comics.
"I guess it's impossible and I'll never break into the industry."
MAKE COMICS.
There is no better way of learning the craft of product, or proving your potential to employers, than just doing it.
You do not need anybody's permission. We don't have diplomas, nor doctorates. We can barely agree on a single standard of what a Product Manager is supposed to do.
But – there is at least one blindingly obvious industry consensus – a Product Manager makes Products.
And they don't need to be kept at the exact right temperature, given endless resource, or carefully protected in order to do this.
They find their own way.
