मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Tax Avoidance: Tirumala Tirupati, Corporate America and Poor Jaya Prada

Times of India reported on August 11, 2008:

“The annual budget of the temple administration of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) has almost touched the Rs 1,000-crore mark. But, interestingly, the country's richest religious body also happens to be the biggest tax-evader in Andhra Pradesh.

The temple management owes Rs 5 crore each to the Tirupati Urban Development Authority (TUDA) and the Tirupati Municipal Corporation (TMC), besides Rs 19-crore tax to the state government for human hair sale…

However, the temple administration is 'casual' about tax evasion and argues that as it is a renowned dharmic institute, it should be granted an exemption…”

NYT editorial said on August 18, 2008:

“Here is a crazy idea to address the United States’ gaping fiscal deficit: persuade corporate America to start paying taxes.

An investigation by the Government Accountability Office found that almost two-thirds of companies in the United States usually pay no corporate income taxes. Big companies, those with more than $50 million in sales or $250 million in assets, are less likely to avoid Uncle Sam altogether. Still, about a quarter of them report no tax liability either…

We find it hard to believe that some two-thirds of American companies fail to turn a profit. What we find easier to believe is that corporations have become increasingly skilled at tax-avoidance strategies, including transfer pricing — overcharging their American units for products and services provided by subsidiaries abroad to artificially reduce their profits here.

Even as corporate profits have soared — reaching a record of 14.1 percent of the nation’s total income in 2006 — the percentage of these profits paid out in taxes is near its lowest level since the 1930s…”

Asian Age reported on March 24, 2008:

"Jaya coughs up Rs 2.5cr: Filmstar-turned-Samajwadi MP Jaya Prada coughed up Rs 2.5 crores to the Chennai City Corporation to get herself declared "solvent" because the corporation had declared her and some of her family members insolvent after she refused to pay fines levied by it.

Had she remained insolvent, Ms Jaya Prada would have lost her Lok Sabha seat. These fines were levied as she and her two brothers failed to pay local taxes for two cinema halls, Raj theatre and Jayaprada theatre on Mount Road.

Last week, Ms Jaya Prada declared herself insolvent to avoid coughing up the tax and going to jail. But she took a U-turn soon after realising that an insolvent person cannot be an MP under Article 102 (1) C of the Constitution.”

Poor Jaya Prada. She should learn from Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, American corporates and many other rich Indians how to avoid taxes successfully.


‘Only two certainties in life, Miles: death and tax avoidance.’


Artist: Spectator
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