FINANCIAL LESSONS FROM LORD GANESHA

Hinduism is majorly a religion of symbolism and is an ardent way of life. Almost every God and Goddess symbolizes something basic to the life and those who decrypt these symbols get all the eminence and triumph in life. Lord Ganesha, the God of prosperity, wealth, wisdom and auspicious beginnings is himself a graven image of many fundamental lessons and veracities of life and if someone is able to adapt these lessons and understand the significance of these hieroglyphs he would definitely win laurels in life. In this blog we have tried to come up with some teachings that we get to learn from lord Ganesha and his stature.

Constant assiduousness

The small yet firm eyes of lord Ganesha are symbols of concentration and attention. He teaches us to keep our eyes focused on our ultimate goals and keep making constant efforts to achieve them irrespective of what difficulties we face in life. In the world of finance it has often been seen that see those who get anxious of the small hitches in the market and consequently get deviated from their desired path suffer a lot. One should plan his financial goals well in advance and should work ardently without bothering about the trivial unforeseen jerks in the market in order to achieve his set goals in the desired span of time.

Listen to every advice and use your head! 

The big head and ears of our Vighnaharta also teach us a very important and lesson in life. One must be open to any piece of advice he is getting without letting your ego intervene and then use your  head to assimilate that advice into your life. You’ll find a plethora of advices (both personal and financial) through friends, television, newspaper, magazines and even from the Facebook and Twitter! But you should use your wits and be cautious while incorporating them in your life (both personal and financial). Hence it’s upto you to subsume the best advice and incorporate it into your life. If you are able to do this you will surely succeed in life.

Have a small mouth

A small mouth (in metamorphic sense) is really important in the financial world. You must not be too vocal about your business plans and should discuss them with only the trusted ones. Besides this you should aware of the volume of gulp your mouth can take and you must not try to bit more than what you can eat. In simple words you should be calculative well aware of the extent of losses and the burden of borrowings that you can carry without straining yourself much. 

Accept what life serves you

The long trunk of the ‘Vakratuda’ teaches us to be patient and be adaptive in life. When life is being harsh on you and you are facing difficulties you must trust your capabilities and be open to adopt the changes. Your business may experience crest and trough due to market conditions and in both these situations it’s really important for you to keep calm and keep working diligently. Besides this you must also be adaptive enough to rejig your plan without being either overexcited or demotivated. 

 Digest to losses to enjoy the gains

The large stomach of the ‘Lambodhara’ teaches us to be able to digest both gains and losses. No matter how much cautions have been taken by you your business is bounds to face the lows due to involuntary market conditions and you must be ready to carry the burden of those losses. However, at the same time, you must have an adequate risk appetite and you must be calculative and aware of the amount of risk you can digest. 

Be educated

You would often see lord Ganesha accompanied with Goddess Laxmi and Saraswati the goddesses of money and education and enlightenment. And this is exactly where you should endeavour to be. Your beginnings and wealth must be supported by adequate funds and apt knowledge. 

Besides the above learnings Lord Ganesha also teaches us to be respectful to our parents and be firm and resolute in the execution at our duties. We must not step down from the responsibilities that have been endowed to us even if we have to face our own father like ‘Vinayak’ faced ‘Mahadev Lord Shiva’ while performing our responsibilities. We know that it’s beyond the human potential to fully comprehend the god but still we’ve tried our best to some basic lessons we can learn from the God. If we can adopt these in our life we can be really successful in life.

WILL THE ‘BIG FISHES’ LET YOU REAP THE BENEFITS OF THE RATE CUTS UNDER THE GST?

 

 

THIS IS HOW THE GOVERNMENT HAS ENSURED THIS…

When the GST bill was passed, opposition as well as some experts had expressed their concerns that the benefits of this icebreaking tax reform might not be passed on to the consumers and only a few market giants would be benefitted from it. To cater these apprehensions the government introduced the anti profiteering clause in the bill.

As per the section 171 of CGST/SGST Act, the benefits of any tax reduction and ‘input tax credit’ are mandatory to be passed on to the consumer in the form of proportionate reduction in price of the respective product.

In order to effectively implement the anti profiteering provision, the GST council has constituted a three-tier body called the ‘Anti Profiteering Authority’. The authority will register complaints, investigate into the matter and would penalize the culprit. The 3 branches under the anti profiteering provision are:

·         Standing committee

·         Director general

·         Anti-profiteering authority

Let’s take an example to understand how the Anti Profiteering law will work. Suppose, after the implementation of GST, a trader now pays Rs. 1000 less. In this case, he would have to sell the item for Rs. 1000 cheaper. If he fails to do this, he would be considered to be indulged in profiteering. The consumer can file a complaint against him with the Anti Profiteering Authority which will work as follows:

·         Standing committee will register complaint from consumers.

                   

·         After the examination of the report, standing committee will forward the complaint to the director general which will investigate into the case lodged by the consumer.

                                                                  

·         It would pass on the findings to an independent Anti-profiteering authority to give a final ruling.

The Central Government has empowered the authority to impose penalty, ask for returning the extra amount charged and to even cancel the licence of the culprit.

Note that in order to file the complaint, you’ll have to back your complaints with all the documents before the authority to prove that the benefits have indeed not been passed on to the consumer.

While this provision seems to be protracting the consumer in the Indian market, business houses and some market experts believe that it might lead to ‘inspector raj’ and they would find it difficult to increase the prices in future as there are chances that a price rise due to any other micro-macro economic reasons like increase in input cost would bring them under the scanner of the Anti Profiteering Authority. However the government has directed the authority not to take suo moto actions.

 

What is BEPS????? All That You Should Know About The BEPS……

The world is fast moving towards a globalized economy.The major economies of the world have opened up their borders for the businesses and the businesses have been utilizing these opportunity quite aggressively.However, this has also led to a complex taxation system and those who know the rope have developed a number of fraudulent and immoral practices for tax evasion.

Usually, a firm operating and making profits in one economy shifts them across the borders by exploiting the discrepancies in the tax rules of the country with an aim to take advantage of the lower tax rates of the another country. Consequently, they end up evading tax in the country where the profit is made and the country remains deprived of its share in the profit which has been made within its boundary.

The term BEPS is used to describe the strategies that exploit the loopholes of tax system of an economy to minimize their corporation tax burden, by either making taxable profits “disappear” or shift profits. However BEPS cannot be deemed illegal, they take advantage of inadequacies of different tax rules operating in different economies, which may not be suitable for the current global and digital business scenario.

This results in huge loss of revenues of the country where the profits are made. As per the estimates by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), economies have been losing 4 to10 per cent of global corporate income tax ($100-$240 billion) revenues annually since 2013. This is a serious matter of concern as global corporate income tax is one of the significant sources of income for an economy especially the under-developed ones.

This has raised some come serious concerns around the world and has initiated a fresh debate to make sure that a company making profits in a one economy does not get away without paying the pertinent tax.

The OECD, under the supervision of G20, has been trying to come up with ways to revise tax treaties, tighten rules, and to share more government tax information under the BEPS project. So basically, the BEPS (base erosion and profit shifting) is an OECD initiative aimed to provide ways of developing a uniform set of tax rules globally. It is a multiple phase initiative including implementation and monitoring along with some remaining standard setting and clarification.

With a view to counter these anomalies,the OECD has developed the BEPS Package of 15 action plans in order to arm the governments with various domestic and international instruments.While countries have been empowered by these tools to make sure that profits are rightly taxed at the place where the profits are being earned,businesses have also been endowed with greater certainty by providing a clear description of the application of international tax rules and standardizing compliance requirements.