Key Highlights from the Union Budget 2021, as presented by the Hon’ble Finance Minister.

Direct Taxes -
• Vivad Se Viswas Scheme Last Date of filing extended to 28th February 2021.
• Citizens of age 75 years and above who have only Pension and Interest income – Need not file👇

What happens with the limited volumes of food aid that are sent to Tigray?

Testimonies on aid to the war-affected Tigray &

Shire: 7 kg of wheat were required to sign for 15 kg. If they refused to sign for 15 kg they were denied the 7 kg

IDPs in Shire: Currently around 80 000 displaced Tigrayans in Shire, spread across three different schools

Addi Da’iro: “Residents were denied food aid after the inhabitants refused to appoint PP officials as administrators. The residents demanded the evacuation of Eritrean soldiers instead.”

Aksum: "I heard there have been food aid of 15 kg of grain per family, and only once. Neither I, nor my relatives have received aid. No idea about how many families received that 15 kg of food aid. How many days would that last? Who takes the rest? Of course, the Eritreans?”

Adwa: “Last time, they made us sign 15 kg while giving only 7 kg”.

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UK’s £35bn fashion industry warns of “decimation” from #brexit - big names sign open letter to @BorisJohnson urging action. Many of 50,000 SMEs on the rack due to VAT, customs and work permit issues. Stay with me/1


You can read the full text of the letter here, co-ordinated by Fashion Round Table @FashionRoundTab, but tl;dr it says that #Brexit has left a "gaping hole" in an industry that relies of free movement of professionals. It's a familiar cry /2



@FashionRoundTab The industry, already whacked by #COVID19, is now discovering that cross-border sales are a horror (VAT, Customs, long delays) and models, stylists, photographers that used to blat around Europe can't any more. They need permits, for themselves, for their gear /3

It is on one level amazing that this is only just fully dawning - as the musician industry found out recently - but fashion is not just big names and big companies. It's actually a mountain of small companies and sole traders often that feed into a huge (£35bn) industry /4

I've written about fashion models issue before (they need tier-5 sponsorship visas) and how that will erode London's status as a hub, but this goes so much wider than this - hence the #dontmakefashionhistory campaign - and comes down the lack of a mobility chapter in the deal /5

** MMT is the new supply-side economics
Forty years ago, some economists started from an uncontroversial (but important) result: a lower tax rate raises the tax base, so revenues won't fall as much. But then they ran with it, predicting tax rate cuts could raise revenues.

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The 80s supply-siders went to the limit and came up with a motto: lower taxes will lower deficits as a norm, not an exception. Many economists shouted this was backwards. It was an implausible limit case. Textbooks called them "charlatans and cranks" or "silly".
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In 80s debates, supply-siders would often fall back to "you don't understand me", repeating "Laffer curve!" endlessly, or stating vacuous accounting identities about how the government collect taxes. Their extreme prediction was repeatedly proven wrong by theory and data.
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But they had popular hero figures (Laffer, Moore), and an eager political audience that would use any argument to cut taxes. Eventually, they inspired new good research, and helped in swinging the pendulum of policy debates to include some valid supply considerations.
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Yet, supply-side economic ideas also contributed to a massive rise in US public debt in the last 40 years. Right-wing governments became as prone to have large public deficits as left-wing governments, in the pursuit of cuts in taxes.
5/13

Expect to see a lot more stories like this. But let's also use this to have a more sophisticated conversation about why the rising tide of cheaper, cleaner energy - like all prior energy transitions - doesn't necessarily lift all boats. Brief thread:

1/ First to state the obvious: the domestic fossil fuel industry in the US wouldn't exist without massive subsidies. $650B/year according to the IMF.

2/ That in turn means that the transition to cleaner, cheaper energy is delayed by those market distortions. Taking away the subsidies is smart economic and environmental policy. It is FANTASTIC that @POTUS is doing so.

3/ But it is paternalistic and naive to assume that workers in those displaced industries will have an easy transition. Knowing how to run an oil rig is a highly specialized, highly skilled job. Gaining that skill set takes time and is geographically specific

4/ The fact that there will be economic gains in other sectors doesn't imply that a 55 year old who planned to work for another 10 years can simply take a correspondence course in thin film deposition and move to the solar industry.