Shuhaib ShariffThe Dark Knight… Yeah, Right!

Yesterday, the 31st of March was the last date of our Corporate Income Tax eFiling. Procrastination is a divine virtue Im blessed with … and I pushed this important task (tax filing) to the very last day.

As luck would have it, we faced some issues uploading the tax returns to the Indian income tax website. My CA was overloaded with work (too many last minute filings) and asked me to head out to the regional Income Tax Office to get this issue sorted out… time was of essence.

Now, I’ve heard of some horror stories of people and their interactions with the Indian Income Tax department. Especially when you are not accompanied by your CA … there is a tendency to harass and treat even honest tax payers suspiciously or so, I was told (As a friend says “Shak, Shak, What the **CK”)

Anyways, the job had to be done and I landed up at the IT office near Indian Express. Had sufficient documentation in hand, just in case …
Met the PRO and he asked me to meet the IT Officer in the computer section. The Officer, surprisingly was courteous and patiently heard me out. At that very instant, the Income Tax website was offline (maybe due to the load) so he did not have access to our records. He asked me not to take the trouble of coming again and gave his office number. “Please call in 2 Hrs and we’ll help you with your issue”, he said. All this, while his phone(s) were ringing incessantly.

I went back delighted that our public servants are not the villains they are made out to be… not all of them at-least.

I called a few hours later, but could not speak to the concerned officer. I was asked to provide the company details and also my mobile number, the operator at the other end said they’ll get back as soon as possible. I sort of thought … gosh its not going to solved today and I’ll have to go back tomorrow … after the due date

Guess what, I got a call an hour later from the Officer and my issue was resolved. The officer patiently waited on the phone for me to login and check if all was well. Too cool Macha!

Moral of the story: Things in India are not as bad as they are made out to be. Sure, they can be better … but its not beyond repair. So keep the faith!

In what could potentially be a game changer, media baron Rupert Murdoch has decided to charge a fee to online readers of his UK publications: The Times and its sister publication, The Sunday Times.

Content on the above portals will no longer be free.

Most analysts are baffled with this decision … online news publications have always offered online content for FREE and they’ve made their money from ADVERTISING. Charging a subscription fee for online news content is unheard off, and most media companies will not even attempt it for fear of loosing readership and thereby advertising. Off-course Murdock thinks differently.

In an interview recently he said “There isn’t enough advertising in this world to subsidize all web content. Few media companies are making profits from their presence online”
Very true, if you ask me.

Infact most media publications are struggling to make any money at all … some like The Tribune have gone bankrupt.
The problem is, with the emergence & domination of new media (led-by the big G) , Newspapers haven’t been able to figure out a viable business model. Giving premium content away for free and subsidizing it with online advertising doesn’t work; primarily because the revenues in the online advertising are a pittance and there’s just too much competition online for a relatively small subset of Advertisers.

Google’s monopoly in contextual content advertising is sickening. The last straw, I suppose is that Google’s only competitor “Yahoo Publisher Network” is slated to shutdown next month. Its game over for large publishers dependent solely on online advertising.

In this backdrop, I believe its good move by the old FOX to monetize content via a subscription model. If it works, rest assured that all big media publications will follow in Murdoch’s footsteps. Time will tell.

BTW … Put yourself in Murdoch’s shoes and you could well ask yourself, ‘What do I have to lose?’  The Times and Sunday Times just announced horrific 2009 results, losing some £80m between them… So for those particular properties it doesn’t take a genius to see the current business model is smashed.”