Relentlessly Trolled
Moneylife Digital Team 13 February 2018
As stock prices tumbled, finance secretary, Hasmukh Adhia, joined the ranks of politicians and bureaucrats with a penchant for putting their foot where they shouldn’t. Mr Adhia seemed to rub in the salt with his post-Budget interview when he told a leading newspaper that gains from holding shares for the long term is a “gain which is not accruing from any effort, but is just an investment gain. It is only reasonable that we look to get some revenue from this class of income.” This lack of understanding of the high risks and research involved in successful investing incensed investors. Soon enough Hasmukh Adhia’s twitter handle—@adhia03—was badly trolled. Even BJP supporter and MP (member of Parliament) Rajeev Chandreshekar joined the issue as did TV Mohandas Pai, ex-CFO of Infosys.
 
Writing for Business Standard about how policy tends to be framed on the basis of ‘gut feel’, intuition and moral positions, rather than hard facts, our editor, Debashis Basu, posed a simple question to Mr Adhia which resonated with many. He said, before Mr Adhia rushes to implement a tax policy that equalises “the long-term and short-term treatment for all asset classes” so that “choice of investment becomes tax neutral,” Mr Adhia may want to “explain why people have been putting most of their savings in gold, bank deposits, real estate and insurance, all these years, even though returns from stocks require ‘no effort’ and are tax-free?” 
Comments
Free Helpline
Legal Credit
Feedback