India’s current war against “black money” will be extended to have income tax officials keep a watch out for people who flaunt their wealth on social media.
It is all part of the Finance Ministry’s 10,000 million rupee (US$146 million) Project Insight to be launched next year aimed at broadening the country’s tax base by catching tax dodgers.
It will use cutting edge technology to gather information on individuals to see whether their claims match their declared incomes.
The project, which will be seek data mining help from tech company Larsen & Toubro Infotech, will rank tax evaders based on the amount of tax that could be recovered, so that the authorities can go after the highest value targets first.
By nature of Indians, its a fundamentally a show-off culture where families compete within families, friends compete with friends, neighbors compete with neighbors and every person tries to outdo the other in showing off their success through acquiring fancy name brand clothes (even if they are fake ones coming from China), nam brand fashion accessories on their personal bodies as well as on their cars, motor bikes, rickshaws, buses, scooters, houses, apartments and even their mud houses. So this culture of showing off their stature and succss is an ingrained deep rooted psychological pitfall of almost 99.99% o Indians. Who are the ones who are not part of this never-ending march to outdo each other? Those who feel very secure within themselves and those who just don’t give a damn to the fads and the fastion! So the Nouveau riche always try to outdo each other with more intensity than the ones who are still trying to climb the ladder of show-off success. So the first things these show offs do is to immediately post their name brand acquistions and other components on their facebook accounts! And this why facebook is the best and the easiest source of these show offs!
Over 60% of the 180 million Internet users in urban India regularly
access social media platforms. The government Project Insight to be launched
next year is a welcome step to catch tax dodgers who show off their wealth
on social media.