Honest citizens who file their tax returns have to provide sources of income such as salary, pension, rentals, etc, for refund. There is one more category and that is the income obtained as interest for the tax refunded to the assessee by the IT department. Someone in the IT department surely has a sense of humour to have included this ‘income’ in the form. Firstly, the tax refund, if any, is credited late into the assessee’s bank account and secondly in most cases, the so-called interest paid for the delay is peanuts and even this is taxed. Their simple logic is we save money by depositing it in a bank account and this money is lent by the banks to others at higher interest. There is always a chance that the loanees become defaulters (and mostly escape punishment) but in all these processes our credit interest is taxed. We might have read/ seen/know persons who are beggars by profession and yet own houses and vehicles and they do not file any IT returns. And when honest people file their tax returns they find that professionals are turned into beggars. This is a travesty of justice for honest taxpayers.
