At the celebrations of the CA institute PM NaMo was the Chief guest and he said many nice things about the institute. He also said some unpleasant things about the institute.

The worst thing is every Tom, Dick and Harry is using this and now saying ‘CAs are bad’. Now let us take Dhirendra Kumar of Valueresearch – he is a professional for whom a lot of people have a lot of respect. However, independence is not something one can very easily associate with him. He is dependent on one industry – Mutual funds. He also writes ‘how to create your own share portfolio’ but that should be in the humor column, not in the serious columns. He started off in the 1980s and he got the idea from Morningstar and the modus operandi surely came from there. While the ‘informed investor’ knows that ‘rating’ is just an ad game, 99% of his readers and mutual fund investors think of rating as ‘what should we buy NOW’ kind of a thing.

Now a website which earns its money from ads CANNOT be rating the products of its advertiser – I PRESUME. He saying things about the CA institute is amusing, and will not matter to the institute.

NaMo says ‘he stuck off 100,000 companies from the MCA’s books’ – most of us would have welcomed that. Once upon a time it made a lot of sense to have many companies in your portfolio, today it makes NO SENSE whatsoever. So when I tried to close down a few companies, I found the process to be cumbersome and expensive. So striking it off the Register was a favor to the CAs, NOT a punishment. Maybe D Kumar should have done some more research into what NaMo was saying (NaMo’s willingness to take credit for normal monsoon and fall in fuel prices apart from UP election is well known I presume).

Of course many magazines and blogs have done no wrong and are what we call in Hindi ‘doodh ka dhula’. Sadly when most businesses are young they go through a lot of difficult times and tight cash flow forces them to do things which a big corporate will not do. Wondering if D K remembers all that or somebody needs to remind him. Giving a STAKE to a client whom you are going to rate is not a very ‘corporate ethics’ kinda behavior. Do I name the year, or the fund house? Well, well too much at stake now, but the amount will sound piddly because a lot of water has flown in the Yamuna since then..so lets not take names. “Inherent self interest and conflict of interest” is an amazingly weak line to use sir.

but the best para is this “He spoke of how senior citizens who may invest their money in mutual funds or stocks could face losses because CAs do not use the power of their signature properly . The question is, how does the government intend to carry on this war? No one, least of all Modi, is naive enough to believe that an inspirational speech is all that will take for CAs turn straight.”

If Namo can blame CAs for people losing money in MF mis-selling, we can assume that NaMo borrowed Ra Ga’s speech writer, but DK endorsing that is amusing. More people have lost money in following his ‘star rating’ of his advertisers than because CAs did anything wrong. In a country a Journo blaming a CA is amusing, and selective picking up parts of a speech is EXACTLY what a journo is good at. Hey, he is not just a journalist, he is an OWNER JOURNALIST – judge him by his net worth not just his 5* rating.

Of course no MF says anything about that website, most have bought peace.

Ask a CA what happens when he tells the businessman client “you will have to pay Rs. 450,000 as Advance tax”. His immediate reaction is “how can we reduce it”

I am sure some of the CAs do help people cheat on taxes, but then many clients including many known to Dk are the ones who tell their CAs…”No CA sir..I do not with to pay 18,00,000 as tax…I wish to pay Rs. 36… That will be the day the CAs will not have to worry…

read this: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/demo-gst-and-now-chartered-accountants/articleshow/59521032.cms