Taxing the rich

This is with reference to “Sure, tax the rich, but who are they?” ( Business Line , March 14).

More often than not, the promoters of corporates milk the company in many ways— legal and illegal. They buy assets like luxury cars, even aircraft and houses in the company's name by using bank borrowings.

The tax department subsidises such financing at 30 per cent on interest, depreciation, insurance, petrol, driver, house keeping, and so on. 

In addition to these, foreign travel, social functions, even foreign study of kin are financed by the company through sponsorship of an ‘employee’. 

Sharad Mohan

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Telecom pricing

The editorial “Declining telecom revenues” ( Business Line , March 13) brings out the impact of the Government treating the industry as a golden goose to feed its insatiable appetite for money to fund its myriad schemes.

The 3G auctions spurred that thinking.

Now, due to high pricing by operators, to recover high spectrum costs, most consumers are not keen to switch over to 3G. The telecom industry must draw users to 3G using equal pricing.

3G uses spectrum better and once users opt for it, even the 2G spectrum can be reused for newer 3G or 4G-LTE technologies which, in turn, can support more users with better quality voice and data.

This requires Government to evolve a policy of orderly transition.

The current Government policies have made this very difficult because the operators have no stable spectrum and the Government has also disallowed 3G offering by existing 2G operators through sharing pacts.

Paresh V.

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