The dust has yet to settle on that massive raid operation. Agony August, as the film industry probably calls it now, will take months of financial investigation to unravel fully.

Even then, it is unlikely that all the details will come to light. After all, the IT industry simply wants the stars to cough up their unpaid taxes, not actually turn them into public criminals.

Why do stars evade taxes and indulge in financial hera pheri? Why do they risk public exposure, even imprisonment, just to save a few lakh rupees when they have incomes running into crores?

The answer is partly in the question. Unlike common criminals, the stars don't risk anything at all. The worst penalty that will be imposed on them is that they'll have to pay the unpaid taxes with interest. There is never any question of exposure or public humiliation, let alone imprisonment.

That's part of the problem. The lack of punitive deterrence. Every film star, producer, exhibitor and distributor knows the IT department fears his/her media profile. If the taxmen resort to harsh measures, the media backlash could be severe. And, of course, all chance of recovering the unpaid taxes will be lost in the process.

The other main reason why stars evade taxes is because they are forced to do so. No, I'm not trying to drum up sympathy for them. Their ultimate motive is greed, plain and simple. They dodge the taxman so that they can get those extra rupees for themselves. But that's after they've successfully gotten away with it.

What happens before they actually do the hera pheri? At what point does a major box office icon look at his fabulous income and say, 'All right, I'm going to declare only x percentage of this money. The rest of it is going in my bank locker?'

The answer is that he doesn't have that choice to begin with.

The choice is made for him, not by accountants or assistants, but by the people who pay him the money in the first place.