Random Thoughts on Finance and Life

A simple thing in terms of improving business environment in India could be to stop officers from asking for the same documents again and again from citizens under different names like scrutiny, survey etc by same Government Dept.  Let me give a couple of examples to explain my point:  1. An ITO asks for submitting Audit report of a certain Assessment Year in the scrutiny when the same has been already available with the IT Dept. (as it has already been submitted). 2. An ITO asks for a co py of IT Challan paid to issue refund of a previous year whereas the payment of same is already reflected in Form 26AS. Here what the ITO is doing is harassing the poor Income Tax payer under different names, asking him to visit IT office again and again under the guise of scrutiny or something else. This not only increases cost of the Govt but also of the Income Tax payer of compliance. This is applicable to all the Government Departments. A simple suggestion of stopping these officers fro...

Recently I have come across a surprising thing. (Well surprising for me because I used to consider this company is having highest standard of ethics in Indian scenario). A very well-known and big financial power house in India which is also in to share broking has come out with two research reports with two different recommendations for same stock/company at almost same Market price at same time, one being sell and other being buy on dips. What is more surprising is the fact that the target price in sell report is lower than the price at which it is recommended to buy on dips in other report. Both recommendations are based on fundamental analysis. Well to give benefit of doubt to the said company, analysts for the said reports are different and so one can say that they may have different views. But how ethical is it to recommend your institutional clients (read big players in the equity market) to sell and at the same time say buy to retail investors (read mango people )?...