Ease of business vs tax pressure

Obviously, tax officials believe that all these tightly regulated companies, including government ones, have short-changed the government

Last Tuesday, the shares of Polycab, which had a market capitalisation of Rs 80,000 crore and sales of over Rs 16,000 crore, slumped 9 per cent on the news of income-tax (I-T) searches at its offices for alleged tax evasion. The stock stabilised for a day and then collapsed 21 per cent on Thursday, when the I-T Department issued an unusually detailed press release saying that it had discovered undeclared cash sales of Rs 1,000 crore — the release did not name Polycab. It also mentioned uncounted cash payments of about Rs 1,000 crore in fake expenses and undeclared transactions