[Sanjivvohra]

Originally Posted by Lobogris

I am really amazed that people keep saying this. EVs are perfectly usable right now. There are hundreds, yes hundreds of chargers in the Bangalore area and THOUSANDS across India. I drive an EV and being in Delhi, I can drive all the way to Bombay, Goa or Kerala without any issues whatsoever. Similarly I can drive to Agra, Lucknow, Nainital, Mussorie, Shimla, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Amritsar etc without problems. So I don't know what more infrastructure is needed for people to get an EV.
Take a look at some of the public chargers in Bangalore.

Agree that infrastructure is improving and I've seen videos on YouTube where people have done 1000+ km runs on their EVs.
Currently the only viable EV is the Nexon. Being a Tata product, personally I'm not convinced of its longevity. That's my personal belief.
Would I trust the roadside EV stations, even if I could find one ( did a quick Google search and , frankly, couldn't find contiguous EV charging statios spread 200km apart). They are likely to be in a blackout!
Stopping every 250km for an hour to charge your vehicle is something that's not very practical, given the current infrastructure. If there's no electricity, good luck on continuing your trip.
The NHAI has some great plans to create EV charging stations every 40-60km, but the plan is for 2023 and beyond. So long drives are out on EV for me till then.
Would I shell out 15 lakh rupees for an EV for local running? I doubt it.

[Sanjivvohra]

Originally Posted by CarJunki

Could you please share which diesel car has this great fuel efficiency?
At this rate, maybe buying an electric car will have much better ROI for you.

It's an Endevour 3.2 4×4.
My point is that you shouldn't have to have 2 cars - one for local and one for long distance+ off road experience.
The Endevour was meeting my requirement quite well till the rapid fuel price hike.

[wildsdi5530]

Originally Posted by carboy

You are taxing people who barely earn enough to feed their family 2 proper meals a day, clothes etc.

Originally Posted by m8002?

I really hope this is a joke. You want someone earning Rs.5000 a month to pay income tax? It would make sense if the above numbers are per month and not annual incomes.

This proposed slab (by me) is the only possible way that we could increase the tax base from 3% to maybe 30%. Taxation in the USA starts just above the poverty line. Remember that the BPL line in India is defined as persons earning <Rs. 17/- non urban and <Rs.23 Urban per day. So someone earning Rs. 5000/- per month is quite rich statistically.

We in Team-BHP are an elite crowd, many of us own cars, a luxury item. So our figures tend to be high in our thoughts.

Originally Posted by for_cars1

Every citizen of a country if earning even 1 rupee has to pay some tax however small the tax amount may be.[/url]

That is a great concept. And something that will probably come into play as Banking Transaction Tax. The day is not far off. However with this uniform 13% direct tax, do the citizens also have to pay indirect taxes?

I am not able to pull the data, but remember reading that 93% of income finally goes back to the Govt as taxes. Easy way to calculate it is by dividing total revenue generated by the total income paid. Harder way as in the article was by taking a cohort of people and calculating the taxes paid directly and indirectly at all levels starting from the excise for raw materials.

But this thread is not about the economics of the govt, but the fuel prices. The unprecedented rise in fuel rates, partly fueled by taxes and mainly by the rising crude rates, and compounded by the pandemics. There must be a deeper reason that we common people have not been able to fathom.

I'm sure that our leaders will tell us in due time about the actual advantages of high fuel rates. We will all be pleasantly surprised then.

[Naetik30]

My thought on different tax types -

1. Indirect taxes - This is probably the worst. It hits the lowest strata of society the most. These are the ones that are supposed to benefit from taxes. But folks probably wont even realize that they are paying in taxes more than what they get.

2. Direct taxes - Income tax - This is probably the most inefficient. Most IT officers working to collect the least amount of tax. And the folks like Jeff Bezos and Musk know to keep their salaries low + borrow against their shares to leave a lavish lifestyle (space ships, yatches... dont compare to the lavish lifestyles we have). That way their taxes are probably lower than a new college grad.

3. Direct taxes - Corporate tax - Hahahaha... I meant a joke.

4. Wealth tax - This is probably the most discredited tax. Hold on, before you all dizz me. I hate it too. But come to think of it. You should pay tax on what you hold every year. Kind of like how mutual funds collect Expense ratio on the entire fund value. This would set the table right for everyone. But then wont account for all the folks who can hold their wealth in the cayman islands, when most people in India live like cavemen.

5. Government employees - This is A tax. No two ways about it. And basically, with folks who act as judge, jury and executioner. They can set their own salaries pretty much. Remember a politician is valid for 5 years. A babu is for his entire life time. These are the ones who rule us. And less said about their ways the better. I mean - lets just make bribes a component in their pay slip and be done with it.

[m8002?]

Originally Posted by wildsdi5530

This proposed slab (by me) is the only possible way that we could increase the tax base from 3% to maybe 30%. Taxation in the USA starts just above the poverty line. Remember that the BPL line in India is defined as persons earning <Rs. 17/- non urban and <Rs.23 Urban per day. So someone earning Rs. 5000/- per month is quite rich statistically.

We in Team-BHP are an elite crowd, many of us own cars, a luxury item. So our figures tend to be high in our thoughts.

What you propose is not realistic at all. It will only increase the paperwork a million times and and make everyone a tax evader.

Lets take a simple case of a house maid/dhobi in your society who visits multiple houses. They easily make above the threshold you mentioned. How exactly are you going to enforce tax collection? You will create an army of taxmen to go after them? Or each customer does a TDS every week/month you pay them?

Originally Posted by wildsdi5530

That is a great concept. And something that will probably come into play as Banking Transaction Tax. The day is not far off. However with this uniform 13% direct tax, do the citizens also have to pay indirect taxes?

Overall low taxes is great and it has been proven to increase compliance. But I feel that the threshold should be changed. Once you have a low direct income tax, then you can add a high consumption tax on luxuries.

We are going way off topic!!

[tj123]

We are facing this issue due to the mindless reduction in corporate taxes. Its interesting to see that almost all the corporate houses are declaring excellent quarterly results and the stock market is up on fire.

On the other hand the government revenues streams have dried up. The only major source of revenue to fund all the expenditure is to tax fuel which is easiest to handle from a tax collection perspective.

The GST collection was also not inline with anticipated estimates due to pandemic. I read somewhere that now government is planning to rationalize the GST rates and its also going to go up only. In short more bad days ahead

[JJ1991]

With this rate fuel prices will reach 150 in no time, and with my car with a fe of ~10 km daily office run is becoming quite expensive. Really wish India will soon have an affordable ev ( Kwid ,Tiago ) with decent range.

[Mohan Mathew A]

Originally Posted by superchamp

How could you predict about the gift we were getting on the occasion of Karnataka day. Prices have increased by 48 paise

As much as I would like to consider myself as a modern day Nostradamus, the credit belongs entirely to the Union government. I just posted what I saw on news.

BTW there is another 48 paise hike coming tomorrow (2nd Nov). So the party continues

[dragonfire]

The future is bleak.

Sell your petrol/diesel cars and buy an EV.

Install solar panels on the roof (God save you if you don't have your own roof).

Charge your EV from the solar panels.

Buy a couple of induction cooktops and return your gas cylinders.

It's high time we became energy independent.

On a side note, I am thinking about leaving my current job and taking up some part time assignment that pays me below 5L a year. I am sick of paying several lakhs in income tax to this scam called "the government".

[StepUP!]

Well, I am really amused by reading some of the justifications given by folks supporting fuel price hikes. It shows what WhatsApp university can do and a case study how ruling party and its Knight manipulate people by ruling social media. Leave apart less privileged or uneducated folks but, even some of the educated masses belive the narrative.
Every month end seeing the income tax on my salary slip boils my blood. I and my wife pay close to 12L yearly as income tax. That is 1L per month. Pay taxes while earning money, while spending money and while taking returns on invested money.
What do we get in return? Zilch! Nada! Zero! City roads - congested, pothole ridden, highways - pay tolls. Education? Health insurance? Infrastructure? Quality of life? What's that sir?
Salaried class is the biggest ass. I could live much better lifestyle in that 1L donated to government every month.
Root to this problem is income tax payer base in this country. Joke of the century. 5 crores in 130 crore population. Unless that goes up, the "asses" will continue to get burdened. Government has come up with this brilliant idea of reducing taxes on corporates. My problem is while we slog and pay taxes, lot of population earns enough but don't pay taxes and reaps benefits - either tax loopholes are provided or law has no answer or intention to bring them under income tax purview. Businessman, professionals, farmers and likes.
I am convinced beyond doubt - the ruling party's economic and financial sense is non-existent. And they don't have brains to hire an expert to come out of this mess. Just to burst one of narratives - oil bonds payments issued by UPA, put forward by current FM, the principle + interest payment of these bounds is approx 1.8lakh crores. And the government earned close to 3 lakh crore in 2019-20 and it will cross 4L crore in 2021-22 through taxes on fuels. These figures are provided by the government.

Every government does nothing for income taxpayers and runs at their expense. And they say I am contributing to nation building. Well I am contributing to politicians coffers, subsidies, corruption, freebies. This is pure blood sucking.
I make a point, while booking on irctc for my parents, not to give up senior citizen rail ticket subsidy (though peanuts), wherever possible pay in cash and avoid paying more taxes. Some learned soul calls me i am encouraging black money. Oh yes, I am. Because things remain same for a poor taxpayer like me. This country doesn't deserve honest taxpayers.

I am really feeling to give up job and enjoy no income tax rather than paying income taxes relentlessly to this government.

[ABHI_1512]

Originally Posted by vharihar

The things you mention happened in 60 years. This govt is trying to build several things in a very short time, its been just 7 years since it came in power. Don't you have any sense of time? There are several firsts in this govt, such as a 8-lane 1500 km expressway, bullet-train project, proliferation of metro construction in a zillion cities, etc, all of which in active construction. And oh BTW, AIIMS's, IIM's and IIT's are still being constructed. I don't want to derail this group, hence not sharing. There are pics from infra-nerds on Twitter.

Sample this: It took a Nitin Gadkari under the Modi govt to come and build the Kollam and Alappuzha bypasses in Kerala (a state historically that has historically been anti-BJP), projects which till then had been languishing for 40 years! (Yes, thats right, 40 years! Google it)

@carboy mentioned metro in UPA regime in Mumbai. Guess its length: Only 12 kms. And they took forever to build this. After Fadnavis came, nearly 200 kms of metro construction, MTHL (Mumbai Trans-Harbor Link), Coastal Freeway, etc have been launched. There is simply no comparison.

Yes, BWSL (Bandra Worli Sea Link) and Eastern Freeway were done by Prithviraj Chavan's Congress govt in Maharashtra, and all credit to him.

I am now convinced that this group is filled with biases with no rational thinking.

Corona situation has been a harsh crisis world over. India's situation is much better than many other developed countries. Of course, if you read agenda-driven media like NYT, you'll get a different picture. But hey, that's NYT for you, they run an agenda where they conveniently overlook the terrible situation in their backyard and misreport about India.

Your holding a grudge against this govt is unfair, as this govt has done a stellar job in handling it for the most part, for a country like ours.

I don’t usually reply to insinuations but sometimes one needs to. Here it goes, for if you do understand some very basic things.

Infrastructure development has been happening since long, but for your sake even I agree that projects that you mentioned have happened. Roads have been built, expressways have been built and metro constructions at many places, even greenfield airports at many places which according to you are financed by taxes. I have a simple question here- what good are those infra projects which are built by making the very people pay through their noses for whom one is building those ?? What about the human index, a nation is not only about roads or ports or highways only which by the way we pay to use anyways. Do the maths sometimes about the earnings from a single toll on a high density corridor and may be you can get the drift. I am not going to almost many indices which gets a boost up whenever fuel prices go up and which probably everyone knows.

You talk of last sixty years, I have a simple equation here as well- at least during the last sixty years, people didn’t die due to paucity of oxygen in the National capital of the country while someone was making a central vista for vanity !!

The less one says about the Corona handling is better. You have the liberty to see that India did well amongst many nations but having lost many friends for as basic a thing called oxygen, I don’t need any agenda or non agenda driven publication to tell me what I saw and felt during the second wave of the pandemic. Every other country took care of its citizen’s, and here, the country wouldn’t even admit that people died because of mishandling of the pandemic.

I hold no grudge against the government, I am a just citizen of the country. The government has every right to take decisions on our behalf. But at least, as a citizen, I expect the government to tell us the truth. They can raise the fuel prices for as long as they want, but at least they should provide credible answers justifying the hikes and not indulge in whataboutary. Everyone is indulging in garbled jumlas whenever presented with facts and that’s sad. As a head of the state, the least a PM should do is being answerable to the electorate but that’s expecting too much anyways. The most funny part- the people in the government don’t have any answers but the peple supporting them are defending the same government by the same tomfullery that’s being fed to them day in and day out, facts being damned.

And now the highlighted part- I am so glad that Team BHP happened to me. It’s just not another cess pool that the current social media is and that shows how well informed and rational the members are. That you have reached this notion that members are biased should now tell you how rational people think about the rising fuel prices and how skewed your logic is here. Forum rules prohibit me from going further otherwise please look up my previous posts on this very thread and see how the central government is raking the moolah in the name of fuel taxes while completely bungling the economy.

Mods- Delete if seemed unnecessary but some things needed to be said.

[msdivy]

The central govt is mopping up revenue and since state govts get their share, they are happy to be complicit in this. The central govt is continuing this policy may be,
1) They have lost money and are making up for the deficit
2) They might have had unforeseen expenditures and are making up for it.
3) Thet might have planned some big-ticket item and might be saving for it.
Since the Govt is opaque, we don't know the reasons

The Govt thinks it is better they invest the fuel cess money than leave it to individuals.

Fuel being input cost to most businesses, the daily rising prices affect the entire supply chain and make it difficult to compute the final cost. Eventually, the cost of every product increases. In a closed setup, this inflation sets the new baseline and people get accustomed to it. Who gets affected are those who are competing with countries where fuel cost is low.

[gaurav_3000ad]

Esteemed members have espoused many views on the rising fuel prices. Of course there are varied and vested interests in the same but I would just like to add my two cents :-

This country is in dire need of a strong opposition party above all else. Else even with the best intentions, we all be limited to an autocracy. Rising fuel prices is just one worrying trend.

[v1p3r]

Originally Posted by vharihar

The things you mention happened in 60 years. This govt is trying to build several things in a very short time, its been just 7 years since it came in power. Don't you have any sense of time?

That feeling when it turns from

unhone saathth saal se kuch nahi kiya

to

jo unhone saathth saal mein kiya, hum saath saal mein kaise karenge?

Originally Posted by vharihar

Sample this: It took a Nitin Gadkari under the Modi govt to come and build the Kollam and Alappuzha bypasses in Kerala (a state historically that has historically been anti-BJP), projects which till then had been languishing for 40 years! (Yes, thats right, 40 years! Google it)

I cannot speak to the lack of knowledge that seems to pervade the rest of your posts, but here let me clarify. I don't need to Google it, having being on this road since the 1980s. The 'anti-BJP state' factor is absolutely irrelevant here, since the NHAI has been a national body (please Google NHAI's full form) since inception, and before that the NHA governed such projects. Again, guess what the N stood for?

You may also be interested to note that 60% of the funds for the road that we must thank your lords and masters for, were actually paid for by the 'anti-BJP state' government. Damn those Commies, and their arrogance in paying for infrastructure! It seems to have worked so well that this state has the highest road/area ratio in India, more than 4x the national average!

Having said that, I have had some interactions with the minister in question, and he is head and shoulders above the normal polity. Your posts, on the other hand, make me wish that Whatsapp didn't allow forwards.

Originally Posted by vharihar

Your holding a grudge against this govt is unfair, as this govt has done a stellar job in handling it for the most part, for a country like ours.

Yes, it's so unfair that we hold a grudge. It's not unfair at all that we lost parents, siblings, loved ones because we didn't have oxygen or ventilators. Not at all unfair that we didn't have enough vaccines, despite manufacturing them. I pray that your sense of fairness, 'stellar' as it is, gives peace to me and others who lost family because of India's Covid mismanagement.

[bkc]

Thread is very interesting to read and know more unknown facts about fuel.

Some problems in my field ( construction):
1) Cement price was some 310s per bag in 2014, but now it is 500rs, can you imagine?

2) Steel price was mostly hovering around 40rs but now it is 70rs for a mediocre brand.

3) Due to fuel, our transport, msand and coarse aggregates have increased.

Sometimes, I feel so low, and think, how am I going to survive my family.

If they justify that high fuel prices is to bring in EV's ? How much electricity do you think is produced using fossil fuels?

Admission is important than arguing that, I am always right, someday people will never listen, even when arguments are actually/factually right from your side. (Not targeting anyone).