With $22 billion in taxes and 4,10,000 jobs, India is not bleeding the US: NASSCOM

MUMBAI, INDIA: India's tech industry billed more than $22 billion in US federal, state, and local taxes in the 2011-2015 timeframe even as its $2 billion investment supported more than 4,10,000 jobs in the US, according to a new NASSCOM report.

According to the report released by Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Commerce Minister, the economic value of the operational support provided by India's IT firms to over 90 percent of Fortune 500 firms and thousands of other American businesses make them more innovative, competitive, primed for new market opportunities, and eager to expand jobs.

According to the report, two-way trade between US and India topped $580 billion over the last seven years, including $103 billion in 2014. In the same timeframe, India's foreign direct investment in the US doubled to $7.1 billion. US FDI in India during this period was $24.1 billion.

In fact, the report threw up a little known aspect of India's high-skilled workers underwriting the healthcare costs of first responders to the 9/11 disaster. Under a little known US law passed in 2010, the H-1B and L-1 Visa fee per application of $2,000 and $2,250 respectively amounting to $70 million annually is applied to provide healthcare and financial compensation to the first responders. In other words, the Indian IT industry has paid more than $350 million to take care of 9/11 first responders including fire fighters, the report noted.

Overall, the report dispelled the myth that India is bleeding US white-collar jobs and distressing its tech economy.

The NASSCOM report also challenged the perception of Indian IT industry paying cut-rate slave wages to workers, a charge that was renewed in a new survey that rated Indian IT companies one of the worst paymasters in the world (at least in India). The report asserted that in the US, while American nationals were paid an average $81,447 per year, US visa holders (guest workers) were paid $81,022, while incurring an addition cost of $ 15,000 towards visa processing and other expenses.

The report also asserted that while overall unemployment in the US was 6.2 percent, it was only 2.7 percent in tech sector, belying the impression that foreign guest workers were adding to the US unemployment situation.

“The two-way flow of investments and intellectual talent is central to the growing commercial and strategic relationships between India and the US. It's not about one nation taking unfair advantage of the other; it is about moving forward together to improve the economies, opportunities, and quality of life for citizens of both nations,” the report observed.

“Leveraging Indian talent, American firms have been able to bring cost-competitive solutions that have helped improve their global market share and bring products with shorter production cycles,” Sitharaman said. “The report focuses on that part of the India-US bilateral equation, illuminating many benefits that Indian IT organizations brought to the US in period covered by the study.”