But not only the rich avoid paying taxes. Less than 3% of Indians ever bother to file a tax return

They are in metropolitan mall "Emporio" where down from their Jaguar and Audi driven by personal drivers, and head to the store "Louis Vuitton" and "Christian Labotin." Buy your Lamborghini in Mumbai. Mounted in their homes and show their expensive watches, precious cast stones inkustrirani pages of Indian luxury magazines. Buy real estate in comfortable but modest quarters - of which only a few years ago is thought to be for the upper middle class - where the apartments now sell for millions of dollars.
The reality is very simple: cast "Very few people pay their taxes," said Sonu Iyer, tax expert at the "Ernst & Young" in Delhi. And tax evasion is widespread. "This is a massive, massive E."
All have long know about it, but Finance Minister Chidambaram Palanyapan shocked the country when in February proposed a new tax on the wealthiest in India. The surprise was not because of the temporary 10 percent tax increase for people earning over 10 million rupees, about 185,000 dollars a year, but because of the number of Indians who fall into this category.
"Let me repeat," said Chidambaram told parliament during his speech on the budget to make sure that someone did not misunderstand, "only 42,800" cast people declare that they earn less per year.
India has a population of 1.2 billion, a country that for years has staggering economic growth and in which each year has seen tens of thousands of new millionaires in which the recent slight delay virtually no effect on the booming market of expensive goods. But less than a Ten thousand strong population admits to the top of the tax ladder.
For the rich tax evasion has become second nature, said Jamal Meklay, CEO of Mumbai-based financial cast consulting firm "Meklay Financial." According to estimates from 2012, the Swiss financial conglomerate Credit Suisse nearly cast 158,000 Indians are millionaires in dollars, although some analysts believe cast that the number is much higher.
But not only the rich avoid paying taxes. Less than 3% of Indians ever bother to file a tax return and according to officials, only about 1.5 million taxpayers declare that earn more than one million rupees per year - approximately 18 000.
Most of those who do not pay have legal grounds. More than half the population earns so little that they did not have to pay taxes on your earnings. Although an increasing number of newly rich, more than 400 million Indians still live below the poverty line.
Millions of others are exempt because the law agricultural income not subject to tax, regardless of their size. And since India has hundreds of millions of small farms and influential bloc of wealthy farmers, few politicians dare to oppose this tax relief. There are many tax exemptions which allow you to not pay taxes.
The vast majority of regular pay taxes are staff members whose companies are responsible for payments to the state, experts say. Although these taxpayers can somewhat manipulate the amounts due, using false invoices to make the most of tax relief for expenditure on property, for example, they are extremely difficult to hide from the tax authorities.
But most of the rest - of the bosses of the family business to doctors, lawyers and small traders - mainly operate in the informal economy, which allows them, if they wish, to hide the bulk of its revenue.
Spores are about the size of India's underground economy and losses from unpaid taxes, but in a country cast with a GDP of nearly $ 2 trillion, even low rates are huge. Recent studies state that 17 to 42 percent of the economy is out of the official radar.
Do not forget the strange case of Mauritius. More than 40 percent of foreign direct investment in India come from this small island in the Indian Ocean. cast This is partly due to tax sprazumenie between India and Mauritius, which legally facilitates the flow of investment funds in India.
But some experts say that it can be washed huge amounts coming from untaxed wealth tax of some Indians who send their illegal money in Mauritius cast and then return them to India as a legitimate investment.
If the breaking of complex international schemes of money laundering requires Herculean effort it catching on at least some of the largest irregular taxpayers of India should be ridiculously easy. However, this is a country where the demonstrative wealth is as common as congestion Ulcinj.
Why not start with the buyers of 25