Hacker News Reader

Comment by kranner | Hacker News Reader

https://inc42.com/features/the-curse-of-angel-tax-travelkhan...

In addition to incidents like these, corruption is widespread in India. Exports qualify for GST exemption or refund, but in practice refunds are hard to get (at least without a 5% or more bribe).

View on HN

5% of how much, though? how much more than 5%?

5% (up to 15%) of the amount to be refunded, which for exporters is all of their GST, which can be up to 28% of the gross value of goods sold.

Just a twitter search for "GST refund bribe" will show a lot of examples.

Scary. Tells you about what a state drunk on its power can do; no wonder India is so big on 'digital transactions' (pushed, interestingly, by the likes of USAID).

Unnecessarily political comment. That too when the Angel Tax, started by the previous government in 2012 (to curb money laundering) (source: https://m.economictimes.com/news/economy/finance/et-in-the-c...), and was ended by this government in 2019 (source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/23/india-angel-tax/).

Angel Tax was not 'ended'. There are still many conditions under which it is still applicable, governing both who can invest in a startup and how the startup can spend its money. [1]

A bigger issue which is still applicable today is that long term capital gains tax on startups and other unlisted companies is still 28.5%, while for listed stocks it is 10%. [2]

There are some exemptions announced today for foreign investments until 2024 with a lock-in period of 3 years. [3]

[1] https://yourstory.com/2019/08/angel-tax-startups-angel-inves...

[2] https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/higher-l...

[3] https://www.livemint.com/budget/news/budget-2020-full-text-o...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com