Amazing,
Arts are important to people even in the toughest of times! New Jersey might embrace a new tax to finance the Arts. The council was worried that this might just be too much to ask but surprisingly, 64% of New Jersey voters approved the idea.
ANT has paved its way 🛣️ to becoming a major FinTech giant in China. An affiliate of sprawling Chinese conglomerate Alibaba, its mobile payment service Alipay handles more than 730 million monthly users. It handled $17T in digital payments (mind the “T”) in the year to June. PayPal just seems so tiny now by handling payments worth $712B last year.
Wait, We’re not done yet! ANT’s environment handled 459K payments a second at the peak of the Singles Day Shopping 🛍️ in China last November. Visa can only handle 65K in one second. It already derailed Visa’s and Mastercard’s as the 2 largest payments of the world. But the payment services drive only 35.9% of ANT’s revenue.
Fin or Tech? Its CreditTech 💳 arm is responsible for 39.4% of the revenue. It helped provide small unsecured loans to about 500M people over the past year through two platforms: Huabei (Just Spend) and Jiebei (Just Lend). The annual interest rate is 15% and 11% for consumers and small businesses respectively. Almost double the average 5.94% small borrowers can get from banks.
The to-be world’s largest-ever IPO 🤑 worth $37B put ANT’s valuation at $313B. The shares were going to be listed on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges starting this week. “Every man and their dog will be trying to get in,” said Khoon Goh, head of Asia research at ANZ Bank. Moreover, the underwriting army of bankers – Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley were going to enjoy a big fat check of $400M. Jack Ma, the billionaire co-founder was about to become Asia’s richest. Instead, he ended up losing $3B, and Alibaba (which owns a third of ANT) saw its U.S.-traded shares fall 8%.📉 WHAT WENT WRONG?
Jack MA’s Risky Speech 🙊 on Chinese regulators did not do him good. He called for a balance between financial innovation and strong regulations to prevent financial risks. He spoke out against the incumbent banking system, “comparing its institutions to stingy pawnshops.”
The Chinese Regulators went 🤯. On Monday, 4 Chinese regulators, led by the People’s Bank of China grilled Mr. Jack Ma and ANT’s top brass for a meeting. Nobody knows what was said, but the IPO was suspended due to vague regulatory reasons that disqualified it from listing on the Chinese market! New rules were also drafted governing online micro-lending – an area in which Ant operates – in a bid to tackle rising debt in the country.
China’s Controlling-ness and the assertion of power over the private sector might damage the biz. Trump administration has already cracked down on companies like Huawei and TikTok, arguing that they are duty-bound to Beijing.
🗳️ Talking about the USA Elections – Biden is inching closer to the victory! Prez Trump’s “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” was the largest overhaul of the tax code in three decades. But Joe Biden plans to overturn it. And amidst this are lakhs of Indians who could be affected by these tax reforms!
⚡ Telangana’s effort to become an investment, manufacturing, and development hub for EVs and energy storage systems. THE FIRST – 200K electric 2 wheelers, 20K electric 3 wheelers, 5K electric 4 wheel commercial passenger vehicles, 10K electric 3 wheel goods e-carriers, 5K private electric 4 wheelers, 500 electric buses, and electric tractors would be eligible for a 100% exemption on road taxes and registration fees.
🛢️ The Gulf might get its first Income Tax policy. Oman’s economy is deep in red and the worst hit due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Ruler Sultan Haitham said a 5% value-added tax would come into force in April 2021.
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💰 Howdy traders! Do You Need to File GST? The Goods and Services Tax is a milestone in the history of Indian indirect tax laws. Any business registered under GST must charge GST on the sale of goods or services. It is applicable to manufacturers, traders (dealing in Goods & Services), and service providers. Do traders (Trading Securities) need to file GST? They are often confused about the applicability of GST (Goods and Services Tax) to ‘trading in securities.’ The answer is: GST is NOT applicable to the purchase/sale of Securities. Let’s, Deep Dive!
👴🏻 Section 112A, The Grandfathering Rule, Long Term Capital Gains, and tons of Scrip-Wise reporting. There has been a lot of confusion around this. It’s chaos for the Traders. Investors are facing hardships to gather and provide data. On 26th September, Income Tax India released a notification regarding Scrip-Wise reporting of capital gains. Yes, there is ‘some’ relief. But the question remains – is it enough?
A salt-tax lead to a march of 385 kilometers from Bapu’s ashram in Ahmedabad to the coastal city of Dandi. Britain’s Salt Act of 1882 prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt, a staple in their diet. Indians were forced to buy the moneral from the British. And adding on to it, the monopoly led the rulers to impose a heavy tax on salt. Although India’s poor suffered most under the tax, all Indians required salt.
March 2, 1930- Gandhi penned a letter to Viceroy Irwin. Asked him to revoke the salt tax or else he’d launch a satyagraha movement. March 12, 1930- The viceroy blatantly ignored the letter. And Gandhi got his chance to launch the campaign. He planned to defy the salt tax by illegally harvesting the mineral from the beachside. He paused at villages along the route and criticized the British rule and the salt tax. April 5, 1930- Thousands of journalists and supporters gathered to watch him commit the symbolic crime. The British officials had grounded the salt into the sand in the hope of frustrating Gandhi’s efforts. But he easily found a lump of salt-rich mud and held it high in triumph.
He announced, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire!”
