Black Money

Today In India, most talked about topic is Black Money and it has been from a long time. All of us talks about Black Money at various occasions, when we talk about corruption or Growth of India or unemployment or Our beloved Politicians. Also not to forget when we have to justify the wealth gap of our relatives or friends with our own. Basically to justify anything wrong with our country, like “Man! somehow, If we can get our black money back from foreign banks, our nation can be the greatest nation in the world”.  It’s something which our politicians use in their every day life to buy luxurious houses, cars, businesses and most important of all; our votes. Few of the smart politicians does not even have to use Black Money in form paper notes to get our votes, they just use the Word “Black Money” in their speech.

Everyone in India, knows about Black Money, from a Gatekeeper to top government Employees and all of us has a big fat figure of some Lakh Crores of Rupees that we assume to be in some banks out of India. Our politicians has been making promises to bring this money back to India and all of us are hoping to get our share from that money and we should because we have helped all these people to convert it into black and we have not got our share yet, so its our right to demand for it, Right? oh! Are you Confused? Why? You know this. All of us talk about black money, we know where it is, we know how much it is, we know who has it, we have ways to bring it back, so we demand to bring it back because we know everything about Black Money.

Do We really know What is Black Money? Who is responsible for it?
Black Money is a symbolic name for Money earned through illegal means and asserts bought by this illegal Money. It maybe earned through illegal businesses like smuggling of drugs, arms or other banned products, Gambling, human trafficking, prostitution or some other businesses. These businesses have to be dealt in cash, as for being illegal. Not only, these deals are illegal but also involves huge amount of money. These deals are hard to be controlled and accounted as there is always a demand for illegal stuff in our society. The other part of this Black Money comes from legal businesses, when these are managed illegally, which is both interesting and alarming, because this is the source of Money which is used in illegal businesses.

Our Nation has a taxation system, where we have to pay tax to our government for their services, which they provide us, like Education, Hospitals, Roads, Border and internal Security and other essential infrastructure we need to make our everyday living and also we pay for all expenses of these people who manage this system. This is where we have a problem, we don’t want to pay them, what the ask for, instead we pay them what we want to, sometimes we don’t pay them at all. There are reasons for us not to pay, maybe their services and not worth what they ask for or what we earn is not enough or just that we become greedy sometimes, frankly a lot of times. There are countless number of reasons as we are also countless. So, when we avoid to pay tax on our money and hide, it doesn’t show up in the tax books and becomes invisible. For example, if We buy or sell some land, we exchange money, the exchange of money is registered in the books and in this exchange of money, we pay some amount of it to government as tax. Now, we all know the market price is different from the government price, so when we pay tax, we pay this tax only for the government price and rest of the money is not visible to the government, which becomes illegal. The small amounts are spent and somehow contributes into tax but the big amounts are kept hidden and has to be spent in some hidden market, mostly it’s used in under the table deals and somehow this invisible money is attracted by invisible businesses which are illegal and contributes to Black money.

 Now, when we, the common people spend money to buy some goods or services, we spend in cash, this cash collected by small businesses has not proof of existence, until it’s declared by them and most of the businesses does not declare all the cash deals. These businesses than spend the hidden cash to buy goods in cash, again to avoid tax and to get goods at cheater price so that they can sell cheap and have more profit. Step by step these cash amounts gets bigger and these big amount are spent in illegal businesses because people who have this illegal money needs to spend somewhere, so they spend it in illegal activities and also the profit is also big in these businesses. These profits are all Black Money.

            Whom to blame? and Why? First of all, the system should have all the credit for this, if not all than at least the biggest part of it because it allows this to happen. Again, take an example of a land deal, the reason why we are taking example of a land deal is because in a land deal system is fully involved. There is a tax involved in these land deals, which has to be paid to government, these land deals are done in presence of a Tax Officer called Tehsildar. We all know for a fact that these land deals are done in way high prices than shown on these documents involved in land deals, so does our Tehsildar, but they just fill their own pockets with bribery which is black money and for them its not bribery, its their share or you can say Fee for letting you have this Black Money, without even making us realize that we are the culprits of this rise in Black Money.

 Now, the question is that if they know everything, Why is this system allowing these deals? The system allows these deals because its helps those, who runs this system and it is the best possible way to turn their Black Money of bribery  into White, because if some politician or their close friends, who fund the elections for them, has to convert the Black Money in White. They can buy a land for any price and show X amount in the files, which these politicians can justify in their tax files. Land deal is just an example, there are hundreds of businesses and deals where this is done the same way. The reason is over taxation or overpricing, which is initiated by these people and followed by us. So, we become a part of it and do not complain, as it favors us too. If the government can regulate this, half the problem can be solved.

Most of the Black money is generated by our ways of spending. I personally believe that honestly, it is difficult for a government to make us declare our real income for tax and these small tax avoiding techniques are followed everywhere around the globe and it’s not easy to keep account and specially in nation big like our. But however, if we take bill of everything we buy and pay our share of tax honestly it may change. We have to deny the liberty of spending cash without being accounted. We can pay our share of tax and keep those bills, file for tax every year with these bills and get some deduction in tax, our payable to the government maybe less than what we pay now, if we follow this way. For more information, You can watch Movie “Nayak” If you haven’t seen yet, Which is close to impossible.

              Those who doesn’t pay tax should either start paying tax or stop complaining about the Black Money because you are already getting your share of this so called Black Money.