PXylem

Is it possible? Yes. There is no tax if you don't work.

When you grow up many responsibilities come. And among many responsibilities, paying tax to the Income Tax department is one which one has to bear, though it is a different story - whether you love or loathe it! But, you can't shrug it off from the painstaking, gruelling experience.

Last week, my days turned hell, I was literally sent to the gallows of death, yearly perpetrated by the department of IT. For a moment (many days), I thought justice was not done to me. I was made a scapegoat to the irresponsible job done by ........[hope you can understand, I work in a company].

I had to suffer, the suffering that was immeasurable and abstract and can't possibly be veiled with the precision of words. I was helpless, after all I had to pay an exorbitant tax that I was NOT entitled to.

The order to pay x amount of tax came as an decree to me which I can't challenge in many of the High Court or in the single Supreme Court. I was feeling miserable to my state of not being able to challenge the decree.

I was slumbering from inside. I was crying. Asking many questions to myself, introspecting hard - why this has happened to me? Very often I cast doubt on my thinking process. Am I not reacting harshly to this situation which was normal to many? The truth is that every time I went down to my conscious and unconscious level, spicing with all my education and savvy knowledge I got only one answer: I am not entitled to this amount of tax.

No body advocated to my hardship that I was undergoing. I mass messaged to all of my friends, near and dear one, the story of my agony. All got flummoxed listening to my pathetic condition. They had the same answer: I don't have to pay tax.

But their repeated assurances were of no use, since the person who had to advocte my case was a greenhorn, novice, inexperienced to the curvy, complex arithmetic of book keeping, and of that of a company level! I was confirmed from the beginning. The person has only read books and solved those that are asked in exams. She failed to answer those questions that were not asked in the exam. We all know how an Indian student clear exam, it is all about the principle of '3': 3-hour of exams; 3-days before exams; 3-months before exams that all matters. And of course, hit-and-trial method of guessed questions.

Besides all these, something that came as a big surprise was that I was not informed when all the 'wrong' calculations were taking place. The final result was announced to me that I have to be hanged till death only by paying the tax.

In a country like India where millions are below poverty level how one could pay taxes, and I come below poverty level! Keeping aside all these things, if there had been something which angered me to the hilt and jerked my consciousness was the demeanour of the person whose job was to save me from the near-possible death. The reaction that I got from the person whenever I approached [him/ her] to assuage my pain was ditto similar to the DTC bus conductor: unempathetic, unsympathetic, moody,thorny. It was indeed a horrible state for me. The whole bad blood in my body oozed out from my veins and arteries.

Not withstanding, at last with all of my documents - working and not working - I filed a review petition to the higher echelons of power. My situation seems that of a person who has to prove he is an Indian and not a Bangladeshi!

At last I won the case, I am an Indian and not a Bangladeshi, but with a heavy price: an x amount of my earning (a salary of a person) had already been deposited to the IT people that I can't get. Sorry, I will get it after I had smoothened my shoes in the corridors of the IT department that may take from 6-months to 1-year.

I got justice, at last. I heaved a sigh of relief that couldn't be maintained in the accounts' books.

What I learned from this experience is that: 1. Experienced hands do matter. 2. A clever enemy is better than a foolish friend, for you can at least learn from a clever enemy, while a foolish friend harms you while he thinks he’s helping you.”