RUTHLESS DEDUCTION OF INCOME TAX FROM THE POOR DEFENCE PENSIONERS BY THE PENSION PAYING BANKS

The crowd due to poor service in a bank

 RUTHLESS DEDUCTION OF INCOME TAX FROM THE POOR 

DEFENCE PENSIONERS BY THE PENSION PAYING BANKS

It has come to our notice that some pension paying banks (PDAs) have mercilessly deducted 95% of the pension of Dec 2016, Jan 2017 and Feb 2017 in the name of Income Tax and paid only Rs.800 – Rs.1000 as pension.

All these pensioners are senior citizens and they have submitted PAN numbers to the bank.  They are all low paid pensioners; normally they will not come under regular tax payer category.

Just because of the payment of some arrears on Defence pension during the Financial Year 2016 – 17, the banks cannot deduct tax ruthlessly without any basic calculation with respect to the annual pension and arrears received by them.

It seems that the banks are trying to frighten these poor pensioners in the name of Income Tax.  It is a shame on the part of a modern nationalized bank to deduct tax without giving any transparent calculation to the pensioner.

For example a 70 years old pensioner having monthly pension of Rs.20,000 with an arrear payment of Rs.1,40,000 have been charged Rs.70,000 as Income Tax by taking away 95% of the pension for 3 months.  A strong email complaint made to the bank resulted in releasing just month’s pension only.  That too without any satisfactory reply to the complainant.  This is a great injustice to poor pensioners.  We have received lot of complaints on the same subject. We are seriously thinking how to solve this problem. Some banks do not reply to email at all.  They are not attending phone calls. 

  

A General Manager Customer complaints Cell of a bank attended my call and simply gave me another number to contact.  To my surprise, no response from that number for the whole day.  What a fun the GM Office staff is making with  a customer, can you imagine. The pensioner is starving without pension for the past three months.  Therefore I made such an efforts.  But all in vain.  No reply to the email also.

We therefore request all the affected pensioners to ask the bank for the Tax deducted calculation through RTI and try to recover the excess deducted tax due to erroneous calculation from the Salary of the concerned bank officials.

Since the poor pensioners are not in a position to proceed against the erring banks, the banks just frighten the pensioners in the name of income tax.

This attitude of the bank cannot go for long.  Banks must wake up, they cannot fool the pensioners forever.  They must give proper account of the tax deducted in pension.  This sort of improper tax deduction cannot be accepted from a popular nationalized bank like Canara Bank, Central Bank of India etc etc.

The Finance ministry and the Income Tax Department should issue necessary instructions to the bank to safeguard the life of senior citizens.  The pensioners associations also should do something.  Our pensioners also should learn to counter these action of the bank.