, Columnist
An Unthreatening Indian Tax Change. Really
The government has closed a loophole without scaring investors.
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One thing investors have learned about India in the past four years, either from their own sorry experiences or from watching the government's high-profile disputes with Vodafone, Cairn, Nokia, IBM and Aberdeen Asset Management, is this: If the authorities in New Delhi come up with a rule, and it has the word ``tax'' in it, they might as well sell first and ask questions later.
So it was a pleasant surprise that the stock market chose not to get too bothered by India's announcement Tuesday night that it had managed to rejig a three-decade-old tax agreement with Mauritius, which foreign investors used to escape the short-term capital-gains tax of 15 percent that locals pay.