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Yes this is stupid and it has caused me a lot of trouble since this all started. I am now seriously thinking of leaving this country and going to NZ or Canada (

Yes this is stupid and it has caused me a lot of trouble since this all started. I am now seriously thinking of leaving this country and going to NZ or Canada (something which I did not want to do because of my parents). Doing business in India is so frickin hard, especially after GST. I have to spend so much time on accounting nowadays and it's getting harder and harder every day (even though all the ads say otherwise). I almost got my Digitalocean account suspended few months back because the credit cards won't bill anymore. Now i have to constantly monitor GCP, Porkbun, AWS, etc since nobody can bill me like before. Also for some reason Indians aren't allowed to keep balance in Paypal but a lot of my customers prefer to pay via it, which means in the end I cannot process any refunds on time and makes customers angry (Paypal wants me to snail mail checks to them to add the USD balance since govt has banned adding the same from Bank account). For recurring charges now you have to create an account with https://www.sihub.in https://www.sihub.in which doesn't accept small businesses kinda making it an exclusive club for big companies. It's really a shit-show here. If it were not for Stripe Atlas I would have been out of business a long time ago. So thank god for that.

fareesh 5y ago
This is primarily because those companies haven't updated their payments systems to be compliant. The e-mandate system seems to be pretty good. Netflix is compliant and it worked seamlessly from day one of the switch. It could be because they have incorporated locally, which can be difficult for many other companies.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  > This is primarily because those companies haven't updated their payments systems to be compliant. For big companies with decades or more of legacy cruft, it's a hell of a lift to make their universe compliant. Especially if your large company tends to fall onto the "decentralized org structure" part of the spectrum where a billion teams run around doing their own thing with very little top-down oversight. It's the same kind of story as it was for GDPR (and CCPA to some extent). Some companies can pull it off easy because their org structure is way more top down. Others that are bottoms up have a much harder time because you have to heard a million different teams towards something new that doesn't really deliver much immediate business value. I assure you though, these companies are all no doubt hard at work making life better for their india customers... it is just a much harder lift for their organizations to handle. Which is not to say their org structure is a bad one. It just isn't optimized for top-down mandates like these.
spikengineer 5y ago
Please understand the context behind the rules before ranting. PayPal restrictions exist because india doesn't have free capital account convertibility and forex providers need to implement regulatory mechanisms to comply with forex regulations. The regulations on forex haven't changed in many years. It's paypal who isn't bothered to comply with mechanisms implemented and hence removed those features as they felt customers like you aren't worth it to them. Most developing countries have capital controls like India for financial stability reasons and removing it for the sake of small segment of entrepreneurs feeling difficulty to process some payments or can't manage the accounting is not in the interest of the state or it's people. Stripe thinks you are worth it to them and are providing that service. Find better service providers. Talk to a bank. As far as GST is concerned, every country has tax accounting. Some other countries like in Europe have it way worse on the paperwork. Have you ever dealt with pre-GST service tax or VAT paperwork? Accounting is a universal thing and it's the reality of doing business.If you think just by jumping one country to the other you can avoid taxes or paperwork you need to rethink your approach to business. Most countries who don't have taxes or tax paperwork are just tax havens living off someone else's money. Will you go to NZ/Canada and not do their tax paperwork? If it's getting harder, maybe your size is large enough to hire an accountant to do that work for you. If you have so many customers overseas maybe you better incorporate a foreign subsidiary or an IFSC subsidiary to manage USD transactions. These rules won't be changed for you - there are larger socio economic reasons for the rules.
jeswin 5y ago
> Doing business in India is so frickin hard, especially after GST. How has GST made things worse? I had paid Service Tax for 10 years prior to GST, and that was a far worse experience. a) Prior to GST these was an enormous amount of tax fraud. GST makes that way harder, on account of people being able to track and claim input credits. Many (not all) people who were complaining did so because they were suddenly unable to dodge taxes. This forced them to disclose all sales, which affected income tax as well. b) Everything is now visible on the portal. Who you paid, what they deposited etc. c) Initially, there were many more compliance requirements. Now it's simpler, with quarterly filing if you qualify.
unmole 5y ago
> Doing business in India is so frickin hard, especially after GST. I have to spend so much time on accounting nowadays and it's getting harder and harder every day (even though all the ads say otherwise). Why are you having to spend so much time? I mean all the popular accounting suites already support GST and automate most of the compliance. The rules haven't materially changed so, why is it getting progressively harder? > I almost got my Digitalocean account suspended few months back because the credit cards won't bill anymore. Why won't they bill anymore? After I enabled international transactions on my card, I haven't faced any problems with DO or AWS. > If it were not for Stripe Atlas If you have a Delaware C Corp, why are you even bothered by RBI rules? None of the limitations of the Credit cards or PayPal apply to you anymore.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
i help businesses in setting up their gst, accounting integration and returns filing. if you need help, lets talk

fareesh 5y ago

This is primarily because those companies haven't updated their payments systems to be compliant. The e-mandate system seems to be pretty good. Netflix is compliant and it worked seamlessly from day one of the switch. It could be because they have incorporated locally, which can be difficult for many other companies.

spookthesunset 5y ago
> This is primarily because those companies haven't updated their payments systems to be compliant. For big companies with decades or more of legacy cruft, it's a hell of a lift to make their universe compliant. Especially if your large company tends to fall onto the "decentralized org structure" part of the spectrum where a billion teams run around doing their own thing with very little top-down oversight. It's the same kind of story as it was for GDPR (and CCPA to some extent). Some companies can pull it off easy because their org structure is way more top down. Others that are bottoms up have a much harder time because you have to heard a million different teams towards something new that doesn't really deliver much immediate business value. I assure you though, these companies are all no doubt hard at work making life better for their india customers... it is just a much harder lift for their organizations to handle. Which is not to say their org structure is a bad one. It just isn't optimized for top-down mandates like these.

spikengineer 5y ago

Please understand the context behind the rules before ranting. PayPal restrictions exist because india doesn't have free capital account convertibility and forex providers need to implement regulatory mechanisms to comply with forex regulations. The regulations on forex haven't changed in many years. It's paypal who isn't bothered to comply with mechanisms implemented and hence removed those features as they felt customers like you aren't worth it to them. Most developing countries have capital controls like India for financial stability reasons and removing it for the sake of small segment of entrepreneurs feeling difficulty to process some payments or can't manage the accounting is not in the interest of the state or it's people. Stripe thinks you are worth it to them and are providing that service. Find better service providers. Talk to a bank. As far as GST is concerned, every country has tax accounting. Some other countries like in Europe have it way worse on the paperwork. Have you ever dealt with pre-GST service tax or VAT paperwork? Accounting is a universal thing and it's the reality of doing business.If you think just by jumping one country to the other you can avoid taxes or paperwork you need to rethink your approach to business. Most countries who don't have taxes or tax paperwork are just tax havens living off someone else's money. Will you go to NZ/Canada and not do their tax paperwork? If it's getting harder, maybe your size is large enough to hire an accountant to do that work for you. If you have so many customers overseas maybe you better incorporate a foreign subsidiary or an IFSC subsidiary to manage USD transactions. These rules won't be changed for you - there are larger socio economic reasons for the rules.

jeswin 5y ago

> Doing business in India is so frickin hard, especially after GST. How has GST made things worse? I had paid Service Tax for 10 years prior to GST, and that was a far worse experience. a) Prior to GST these was an enormous amount of tax fraud. GST makes that way harder, on account of people being able to track and claim input credits. Many (not all) people who were complaining did so because they were suddenly unable to dodge taxes. This forced them to disclose all sales, which affected income tax as well. b) Everything is now visible on the portal. Who you paid, what they deposited etc. c) Initially, there were many more compliance requirements. Now it's simpler, with quarterly filing if you qualify.

unmole 5y ago

> Doing business in India is so frickin hard, especially after GST. I have to spend so much time on accounting nowadays and it's getting harder and harder every day (even though all the ads say otherwise). Why are you having to spend so much time? I mean all the popular accounting suites already support GST and automate most of the compliance. The rules haven't materially changed so, why is it getting progressively harder? > I almost got my Digitalocean account suspended few months back because the credit cards won't bill anymore. Why won't they bill anymore? After I enabled international transactions on my card, I haven't faced any problems with DO or AWS. > If it were not for Stripe Atlas If you have a Delaware C Corp, why are you even bothered by RBI rules? None of the limitations of the Credit cards or PayPal apply to you anymore.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

i help businesses in setting up their gst, accounting integration and returns filing. if you need help, lets talk