Crass Indian Attitude

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Written by vl

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I attended a Workshop on managing Taxes, held in English on 7-April in Bonn. 13 folks attended, of which 3 (including me), were of Indian origin. Normally, one would expect that living in Germany would teach the average Joe to respect time and be sensitive to others too!

So we have this one interesting fellow man - a youngish smart ass, who rolled his tongue in British English, as if he was born off one, to incessantly ask questions. So much so that the presenter, a simple German Tax consultant struggling to read his prepared text off sheets of paper to explain the cases, lost track of time. And he over-ran the session nearly 20 minutes.

Now if that was not sufficient, he goes on to first proclaim, that he hasn't filed taxes for 3 years, as he believed he didn't owe any. At that point he was hinted, that perhaps by filing taxes, he may even get a refund. Since the Tax Department in Germany is pretty prompt at returning excesses paid. But shortly after, he spices it up further, saying he did get notices from 'Finanzamt' (Tax Department) that he owed sums, but he conveniently ignores the same and choses not to pay up! As he knows, if he filed any taxes, they would ask for more. And he thinks he doesn't want to pay. Voila! Now amongst 13 international folks, he makes a whole tribe of us Indians look like the cheap, SOBs who want to cheat a system and not pay due taxes?

It may be a separate story, that nobody wants to pay taxes. But proclaiming it, that too loudly amongst a bunch of people sitting to understand how to do it right, this surely was an exemplary star. And with a smug smile, he claimed his heroism, leaving me wondering, what kind of attitude do we reflect, as guests of a country? And bring with us the heritage of tax avoidance, as a display of our core ethics? And even be crass about it? I was in the least ashamed.

I also wondered, if every Indian did pay their fair share of taxes, perhaps even our home turf of 'citizen conveniences', could be as well developed, as our western cousins are?

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