Learnings outside the classroom..

"Hey Ankur, I wanted to apologize to you. I didn't intend to corner you. I hope you didn't mind." 

The professor of Financial Accounting from Duke stopped me outside the dining hall after lunch and said those words. I was stumped. Earlier in his class, I had opined that Shareholder's equity is the liability of a company towards its shareholders. The class opposed me in chorus and the professor told me never to repeated this anywhere. It was usual, a professor correcting his student. I didn't even think any bit about that, then or later.

But still, I was humbled and touched by his gesture. I will keep this in mind wherever I go in my life. The learning has begun.

Thanks professor.

It's just the second week honey..

Pre terms are on here and this is my first post from ISB. It's been just 11 days and feels as if months have passed. A total information overload has started taking its toll.

My quadi Satyam got locked behind the bathroom door today. The housekeeping had to call the carpenter to break the door open and rescue Satyam. What was more was that he wasn't alone in the bathroom. He had taken the housekeeping supervisor along to demonstrate him the problem with the lock. Apparantly this year is specifically bad for Satyams of the world !

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell, the quad here is a four bedroom flat shared by four students. Our quad would perhaps have the highest average GMAT score - 765. We form a simple arithmatic progression with 750, 760, 770, and 780. We discussed last night to paste our GMAT scores to our room doors. That's the closest geeks can get to being cool (All pun intended!)

Today, yours truly had a chance to sit within 10 meters of a person who sits with the likes of Barack Obama. The Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd C. Blankfein, visited the school to deliver a talk on Entrepreneurship. It's always inspiring to see how humble all those top guys are. Though I had to repeatedly tell myself not to get up from the seat, go right down the aisle to the front row and shout at him. I always have this urge whenever I am supposed to behave. In the school, I always wanted to slap my principal whenever I bowed good morning or afternoon to him. He liked me very much. He even admitted me to school even though there were no vacant seats. I always felt like slapping him. 

During the high coffee, an American working for the US consulate in Hyderabad approached me and Priyom while we were admiring the girl whom I had discovered last night from the profile book. He caught us off guard and we had to struggle to think for our introductions. To begin with mine, I almost said what a nice pair of legs she had! I have seen more girls in shorts, minis, micros, and bikinis in the last 10 days than I had seen in my entire stupid life so far. Anyways, three other guys joined us soon. The American was amazed to see that all of us Indians were working with American firms and mostly in America before coming here. Perhaps his first brush with the global outlook at ISB.

This batch is a diverse one with rich experiences all across. Just our section A itself, of about 72 students, boasts of an ex IAS officer, an ex Lt. Colonal, a national level Bharatnatyam dancer, a black belt in Karate, the business head for the west region at Lowe, the senior creative group head for another advertiser firm (can't recall the name), a second ranker in BTech at IIT with a GPA of 9.7/10, a French guy who plays Tabla and sings hindi songs and Urdu Kawwali (Sometimes the sadist in me wishes he were more French!), a millionaire real estate businessman, an Army girl, and of course yours truly. They all speak a great deal about how lucky there are to be studying with yours truly for the entire next year!

Even our study group of five, which will be doing most of the core terms assignments together for the next six months, boasts of three IIT graduates, including that second ranker I already told you about, one 40 year old sales and marketing guy who did his BTech from IIT Bombay in 1992 and now has two cute kids, and lastly yours truly. The fourth one is a CA who also secured 49th rank in the CA exam. And the fifth one is a cool chick who was a corporate trainer but sadly got married when she was 21. Some people are too early to fall in love, aren't they!

By the way, yours truly is looking for a sweet, pretty, and caring girl for himself because his dreams of hooking a hot chick here just got shattered, given all those dudes in the batch...sigh!

ISB: 3 days away

My mom asked me today how it feels with only three days to go. And I thought for a moment -

In 3 days, I would set foot on what was a distant dream for me for a long time. I will become a current student of the Indian School of Business; a part of ISB. Within me, I still haven't started feeling the reality yet and by dramatizing it in the sentences above, I am trying to drum it down myself. But the devil's sense still tells me 'how come something so good happen to you !' 

What to be careful about while filing your federal income tax return in the US as a non-resident alien..

Many of us come to the US in the later half of the year and because in such cases we are in the US for less than 180 days of that financial year, we are called non-resident aliens for that financial year. Alien because we are not the citizens of the US and non-resident because we were here for less than 180 days of the financial year. The income tax filing for non-resident aliens differs substantially from that for resident aliens. If you want a peace of mind and an assurance that you will be the last person to receive a notice from the IRS, which is the US income tax department, it's important to stick to the basic rules of income tax for non-resident aliens. Some $500 of risky extra return will not benefit as much as the toll a notice from the IRS will take on your mental and financial health. All these rules can be dug out from the official site of IRS, which is of course not a very attractive time pass for most.

When I approached several of my colleagues and friends for guidance on how to go about filing my IT return here, the most common piece of advice I got was to go for a consultant of indian origin, labeled 'Desi Consultants'. Apparantly, they help you get more refund and charge less than the local ones. I talked to three such desis and smelled something fishy - each one was getting me a high refund in the same ballpark but interestingly, the heads under which the refunds were coming were different with each. This made me research over this for almost a full day if I add up the number of hours put in different days. I called up IRS and other  tax consultants several times and sacrifised a few hours of my life reading the IRS website. Eventually, what I found out was somewhat startling.

I know some half dozen colleagues (from previous years too) who came in Oct/Nov of the year and were a non-resident alien for that year. They all e-filed their claims through desis, using the form 1040. Moreover, these consultants applied standard deductions on their gross earnings which easily brought their federal tax liability down to zero. The same has recently happened with one colleague this year too. As follows, all the above bold faced approaches are not applicable to non-resident aliens.

• Surprisingly, the IRS says that non-resident aliens should fill form 1040NR (NR stands for non-resident, and doesn't defy common sense) or form 1040NR-EZ (EZ pronounced as easy). E-filing of both these forms, i.e., for non-resident aliens has been discontinued by the IRS from some time now. Only paper filing is done for them. 
  
• Moreover, IRS says that standard deduction is not applicable to non-resident aliens. Only itemized deductions can be claimed with various expenses clearly mentioned.
  
• And even the itemized deductions has an upper limit of 30% of your adjusted gross income (AGI). 
  
• Effectively, no non-resident alien can escape paying at least some federal income tax. Though there is one case of very low income where this is possible and I have explained that in the points in the closing paragraph of this post. (Don't be too hopeful though, for average income group in all probability, that would apply only if you came in December)
  

The desi consultants I talked to are either not aware of this or are not admitting this. They still assure me of a 100% federal IT refund with standard deduction using the form 1040 that is not even meant for me. All of them, without fail, brought my fed tax liability to zero. Some are even getting me an 'Earned income credit' or 'Recovery rebate credit' which in such cases will be almost a fraud.

Sites like turbo tax, etc. in their free e-filing process with form 1040 show me both types of deductions - standard and itemizes and flatly suggest I go with the higher of them. But then 1040 is for residents and they may have a choice in deciding the kind of deduction applied.

Now, I am not a prissy pedant abiding the law to the nth detail but I at least don't want to receive any IRS notice for violation of the basic income tax rules while I concentrate on better things at ISB.

To close with, let me write down a rough way to calculate the federal IT refund for non-resident aliens:

1. You wouldn't get any refund from social security tax and medicare tax, if you have paid them.
   
2. You would get refund only against federal income tax and state income tax.
   
3. Note down your adjusted gross income (AGI), which is nothing but the gross income that you got in your pocket (as against the annual gross income)
   
4. In all probability, you have incurred expenses towards house rent, internet, utilities, laundry, and laptop for official use (if you use it for personal purpose too, you can specify a percentage usage towards official use). Itemized deduction can be claimed against those expenses but only to the extent of 30% of your AGI. And to be in the risk free zone (not to invite an IRS notice), a good tax consultant will claim some amount between 29-30% of your AGI under this head.
   
5. For singles, an additional $3500 is deducted flat from AGI (I am not sure about the name of this head). This amount for married people, whose spouce was with them in the US for most part of that period, is $7000. This deduction brings your federal taxable income down to zero if as a married person, your AGI was about $10,000 ((100-30)% of 10,000=7000) and as a single, your AGI was $5000 ((100-30)% of 5000=3500).
   
6. After deducting the above two heads, you pay a tax on the rest of your income. The tax rate depends on which slab you come in. The minimum is 10%.
   
7. One consultant that I found following all those nitty gritty is IBSN.

I hope this information is of use to those who bother to do some research before filing with any idiot. Gotta be careful in financial matters in a foreign land.

Little bit to learn from everybody...everybody

Sometimes you wish

you could go back in time

and do the things differently

just a little bit...

the fascination of being in america

Sometimes, on my way to office or back, I look around and say to myself - "This is America." The dream of more than half of India. The land of the rich, the educated, and the leaders. I say to myself - "This is America. I am standing on the American soil. I am touching the American trees." I try to see if I can fascinate myself the same way as are a large number of people back home.

But all I can feel fascinated about is me standing on the globe at a position almost diameterically opposite to my home. Either I am upside down or they are. Or we both are at different times of the day.

Early days have been difficult here, without a car, with not enough disposable money (saving for my MBA fees), and everything in a flux. But I don't ask myself questions whether I like America or not. Whether I would want to stay here for long or settle here sometime or not. I want to do well in whatever I choose to do in my career and if that means going around the world, thoughts about liking or disliking where I go would do no good to my career. In all probability, my job would take me around the world a lot. The question of where I base myself wouldn't be all that relevent.

Bin, Pallet, Small Hang Tag, Large Hang Tag, Business card...phew

Small harmless labels on the retail shelves...

...no easy game, I tell ya.