Incometax

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Nothing quite competes with the relief of submitting Tax Returns (that I did just now).

Edwin used to ask me to go easy on mailing him during the fortnight before he was due to file his Tax Returns (most unwillingly).

Like there are about one percent perverts in any random sample of men, so too in nations...I am told the Scandinavians feel proud to pay their taxes...a chilling revelation.

Not so the Americans I am sure...everyone over there looks reluctant just like us; and the two great Political Parties thrive on their different outlook as to who should be taxed more, why and why not...Yankees have their hearts in the right place...their pockets.

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I never heard of Income Tax till I joined IIT KGP. Neither my father nor my two literary uncles ever fretted over them...

As I said earlier, I joined my job at KGP in 1965 with a whopping gross salary of Rs 465 = 00 (the cost of a packet of nappies for Ishani).

And on my first payday, I had to join a crowd of about hundred walking to the Account Section in the Old Building wading through thigh-high grass, stand in a queue, and get paid in hard cash...altogether a sweet experience.

And the high continued till the next March when I was sent away empty-handed...my pay was not released since I didn't file the IT Returns...I asked what are they?

I was then guided to the IT Clerk, who scowled at me and seeing my crestfallen face, he asked my Name and Roll Number, pushed the IT Form in front of me, and started dictating all the entries offhand (with a reprimand or two for trying to backchat)...he was the first genius I met at KGP...he knew all about me...the only question he asked was if I was a bachelor to which I proudly replied 'yes' and asked if it mattered...he said, of course...I would have got immense tax relief if I had a couple of dependent parents staying with me, a wife and kids...he calculated and told me that if only I had six kids I didn't have to pay any tax at all, citing offhand three or four Sections of the Tax Code... a hefty tome.

This truly was a double whammy...1. No wife and 2. Double tax.

After seeing that tome which was twice the size of both volumes of Morse and Feshbach combined, I decided that the exercise was beyond me and fell on his benign feet every year.

Things changed within a decade. During the Emergency of 1975, Sanjayjee rather peremptorily withdrew all concessions for kids as a disincentive...rather too harshly as the victims reported...Bengal as usual escaped the trauma...at least I knew of none in our Bachelor Hostel who was dragged and sanitized...at least they didn't report to me...perhaps the incentive for undergoing the surgery was the pittance of Rs 100 and a glass of milk...later on the incentive became more aggressive...one full increment as 'special pay'.

I didn't succumb...one has one's notions of privacy if not principles...

But by then my Guardian Angel IT Clerk had retired and I got tired of catching the duplicate feet which didn't seem so attractive.

So, I took up the Code Book and 'studied' it...and found that it was no tougher than cracking Wyckoff's Crystal Structures...a compendium of which only one pertinent page is required to be mastered depending on which crystal you seek the structure of.

By then DB joined me in our Office; and was mystified, stupefied, petrified and electrified all at once when he watched me fill up my IT Returns all by myself...he used to go to the only IT Lawyer on Campus and fall on his costly feet.

DB never handled Wyckoff...being an out and out theory man...

So, between me and he I was declared the IT Genius and he just copied my IT Forms...we had the same lousy pay and no extra income.

Once I was away from KGP when the IT Forms reached our Office and DB thought rather uppishly why not he do it himself with a li'l bit of effort and a couple of fags.

When I returned, his face was ashen and he declared that for donkey's years we had been paying only about half the due taxes and we would duly go to the Midnapore Jail and lodged in the same double-dungeon.

I knew what was the matter with his calculations...one learns by prior experience.

So, I asked him if he deducted the Standard Deduction allowed to us from our Gross Income.

He said: "Standard what?"

To this day I recall his chagrin with pleasure since it reminded me (lightheartedly) of Jerome's crack:

"When George is hanged, Harris will be the worst packer in this world."


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