Find The Boots

The clue train has left the station, and the Indian government forgot to buy a ticket.

In their infinite wisdom, the Indian government has decided to start collecting a 12.25% service tax on all passengers that occupy a First or Business Class seat on an international flight coming into India. From the article:

"As a result, airlines will now have to pay service tax even for passengers who have been upgraded to the upper class either as a goodwill gesture or by encashing the miles they earn through frequent flier programmes.

With this, airlines will now be forced to terminate all free upgrade requests or charge service tax — which would range anywhere between 15,000 and Rs 80,000 per passenger depending on the sector they fly and the upper class they choose — from all such passengers," an airline industry source said.

Can you believe this?

The "tax" on using an eVIP upgrade from business to first on a long flight such as ORD-DEL will be around $800 USD. That's a pretty large set of boots to hide.

Do they have any clue who is riding in the First and Business cabins? The back of the plane is full of people visiting family and tourists. They bring money into the country and then leave, but the people in front bring something much more important.

Travelers in First and Business class tend to be executives bringing high paying jobs. With a single exercise in stupidity, the Indian government has 1) Made it more expensive to come to India to hire people, and 2) Made it much more uncomfortable to come to India to hire people. The AA ORD-DEL flight in the ghetto business class seats is pretty much intolerable. The only thing that flight has going for it is that it's a great use of an eVIP to a suite. But cough up $800 of my own money to use an eVIP?

You'd think the Indian government didn't want executives from multinational companies coming in to create jobs.

Of course, what can one expect from a government that can't provide clean drinking water or provide basic sanitation. What should we expect from a government where it's acceptable for the cops to randomly pull over cars and demand money?

My prediction: A lot of business people will find reasons not to travel to India. The projects will start to fail at a much higher rate, and India will be seen as a bad risk. The outsourcing money will start to head somewhere else, and India will go back to being just a footnote.