2016-12-07bloomberg.com

... the idea of a war on unaccounted-for wealth remains central to demonetization's popular appeal, which means Modi will have to find other ways to keep that narrative going. So the government has now begun to push income-tax officials to conduct raids on those who might be concealing assets in forms other than cash, such as gold.

...

What this means, unfortunately, is that India's income tax officers have just won the lottery. During a raid, they can, on the spot, decide whether or not to confiscate a family's gold holdings. And remember, India has an enormous amount of gold -- 20,000 metric tons, much of it inherited. (The rules governing simple searches are different, but few know that.) Rather than cleaning up tax administration, the government has handed tax officials more power than they've had for decades. The rich will pay what they need to escape harassment; the rest will suffer.

The worry is that the government, having committed itself to draconian measures to seize black money, will resort to more such attempts to live up to its promises. An India in which individuals are constantly concerned about their ability to explain their returns and their assets to powerful and poorly monitored tax officers is not one in which investment is likely to pick up. It fell another 5.6 percent in the latest GDP figures -- the third successive quarter it's dropped.

... many analysts agree with former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who's predicting the new policy will knock 2 percentage points off that world-beating GDP growth rate.



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