If you are to single out any establishment or system with which the people all over the world have a very uncomfortable relationship, it is tax establishment. Reactions of a strong dislike may vary from mild to extreme, depending on the experience of the person concerned. A notice from the department or a prospective visit to a tax office ,would make the bravest feel somewhat uneasy. We have seen the list of defaulters who have tax arrears running into a few crores. The reach of the department is so wide and so deep that very few can get around it. Not even our gods and goddesses of the silver screen with all their superhuman, magical and divine powers on the screen can escape the dragnets of the taxwallahs.

The collection of tax is the oldest form from time immemorial as the principal source of revenue of any ruling establishment. And down the ages the importance of this source of revenue has grown enormously. There is hardly any economic activity which escapes the tax net. While the rich or relatively affluent sections of our society apart from paying indirect taxes also pay direct taxes like Income Tax, Wealth Tax etc. The common men too can not avoid paying taxes like VAT, Service Tax, Excise etc.

It is true that the taxes we pay, go into meeting the obligations of the government and developmental needs but the relationship between the taxpayers and the Revenue Department is somewhat antagonistic. The taxpayers have a grudge that their hard-earned income is made to share on a higher proportion. On the other revenue officials complain that some of taxpayers do not come to it with a clean pair of hands while submitting their returns of income. This phenomenon is just not confined to India. Rather it is a universal one and nothing illustrates it more aptly and tragically than the sensational act of suicide by Joseph Stack III- a computer engineer and an amateur musician who after harboring a deep-seated conviction that his money and savings were being wrongly taken away by the tax authority, flew a small aircraft into the building of Internal Revenue Service when the staff were just getting ready for their day's work. A tragic tale of a taxpayer!