Thread by @Vidyut

Govt has started a massive attack on small online sellers. Reminds me of the Patanjali noodle launch.

You can't so much as make a paper aeroplane and sell it online without registering for GST.

Looks like reliance is ready to launch its e-commerce whatever it was up to.

https://twitter.com/NevaStopXplorin/status/1153213951301152768

Govt gave big gyan to Walmart, etc, but fact is, govt itself is strangling SMEs that are niches without concentrated local markets and depend on the internet for sales. Sooner or later, we will be forced to use service of profiteers just to make a living. OR die of paperwork.

Online sellers aren't an interconnected community, with people working wherever they are and no reason to interact. So in spite of the ridiculous GST, no one has been able to mount a robust challenge legally or on the streets.

Harms SME in creative, niche areas worst.

A housewife making some piece of art or a basket weaver creating an innovative product hardly has the volumes for tax - such income is more a supplement than high business. Forcing the very first sales to pay high taxes, heck register for GST is INSANE.

Make no mistake, the no waiver for online sales is more like "no mercy" - govt is shutting down small businesses. Think of it as the vanishing street food stalls of the digital world.

Then hide unemployment figures, lack of purchasing power with people, etc.

Part of systematically decimating India. Strangle small earners - agriculture, startups, street vendors, online sellers... funnel money to big businesses. At least big enough to pay tax. If big enough to pay hafta to the party, policy decisions will HERD money into their wallets.

All this GDP crap, low tax collection, unemployment... doesnt' come from thin air. People are finding it harder to work. Killed by a thousand papercuts.

INSANE paperwork for everything. You can't be compliant unless you can employ people to make it happen.

SME must die.

This is really a small example to drive things home. Say you are a housewife doing a microbusiness from home. You make some stuff in your spare time and sell it for some spare cash on say Ebay or amazon, etc.

You don't have a shop and you can't rent one or sit in one all day.

This govt wants you to be register for GST over that whatever little money you earn from your hobby. Getting an accountant to do it will cost more than your turnover! And then you have to file regularly.

In other words, if you're trying to make small money, don't. Starve.

But wait. It gets worse. You think chalo, you'll pay an accountant or figure it out for once and you'll be able to sell forever, even if you end up giving a fifth of your turnover to the govt (and much bigger % of profit). At least you'll be able to sell, right?

Wrong.

If you live in a rented home, documents you have to provide to register for GST include an NOC from your landlord for you to conduct business from their premises.

If that is your home, it is residential property. That NOC is proof of your landlord renting it for business.

So, if you live in a rented home and want to sell those sweathers you knit in your spare time online, you will have to start living in a commercial property, or rent a shop or, as a bhakt helpfully suggested last time I ranted, register with a fake address.

At this point, most law abiding citizens will be life "fuck it" no need to sell anything. Selling is more loss making than not selling.

Bye bye SME

As for micro, GST is designed to kill all non-local micro industry. Which basically will kill not just the usual money, economy, blah blah, but also innovation, highly specific things that few people in diistant places want, diversity in the kind of things made in India.