Income Tax Filing & Honesty

Before delving into the topic, one incident – My ex-colleague’s co-passenger forgot to renew his monthly pass [first class] of Mumbai local and travelled 3-4 days without being caught. When came to know, he, on his own bought first class tickets, to and fro just to compensate those days.

Just to mention here that first class tickets cost almost 4-5 times the general ticket. For him, it wasn’t a compulsion or even necessary, as no one was about to complain, but still he did that.

Now coming back to the topic.

As June approaches, it starts the discussion of getting Form 16, returns filing, searching for CAs.

Few do it on their own and boast how they manage it despite it’s not being their core.

This period also brings the fake rent receipts, driver salaries, fake fuel bills, LTA receipts etc.

I think this is the common thread which binds the common earning man, the C suites, celebrities, HNIs and even the big corporates, obviously with varying details.

We heard many a times how big corporates got caught in such cases.

Now, how severe is this dishonesty or unethical behaviour.

The tax cuts in monthly pay and the big cuts at the end of the financial year really pinches a lot.

As a common man, we will not cheat, we still stand in the long queues to get the train/local tickets, ensure the necessary government taxes, dues paid in time.

But when it comes to this, we try to find loop holes on how to circumvent the process to avoid that additional tax burden on self.

We are entitled for certain perks to save tax and its legal too, but many a times we don’t actually utilise those services. But as an entitlement, we don’t want it to go and pay additional tax.

So, it brings out the small cheater in us. We think it as “Taking our own money back”, so it’s neither cheating nor unethical.

And we substantiate it saying, almost everyone does it then nothing wrong with it.

But when we draw a line, my friend’s co-passenger will always be on the one side of line, and the small cheaters will stand together along with the big ones on the other side of the line – No in between.

So, which side of line are you on?

Vb