The Indian Government’s tirade against shell companies and its officers continues in full swing. As per the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), around 224,000 shell companies (companies remaining inactive for a period of two years or more) have been struck off from the Register of companies. This is about 15% of the total companies registered in India.
The separation of control from ownership in publicly listed companies requires effective corporate governance. As investors have limited visibility, it gives rise to the “agency problem”, where managers, as agents, may not run the company in the best interests of the shareholders.
Her name is Sophia. She looks a bit like Audrey Hepburn and gives facial expressions while talking. She has an answer for every question. And she is the first robot to be granted citizenship of Saudi Arabia.
Today is the beginning of the upcoming media frenzy about the Paradise Papers that will reveal many more names of public individuals, public companies, politicians and many not-so-public individuals with a blatant disregard for tax laws.
The bill introduced by Representative Brady of Texas yesterday has the “short title” (Section 1), “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”. It is the only thing about the bill that could be described as short.
Backed up by government initiatives in the past 2 years and the resultant improvement in various parameters, India has jumped up 30 notches from 130 to 100 (out of 190 nations ranked in the list) in the latest edition of the World Bank’s global rankings on Ease of Doing Business.
In 2015, in the wake of the financial crisis, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration published a report, detailing the policy issues involved in the administration of Net Operating Losses (NOLs). It is time to act on this report and to give corporations a straightforward way to trade their losses on an exchange, or at least in a Treasury-approved dark pool.