RREEDD and the power of six to Income Tax Department

An article written when the Income Tax Department started the Registration process for Form 26AS, couple of years back.


RREEDD and the Power of Six.

If IT department has its way you would need to spell red in the manner mentioned above and also give up on many of your favorite things. How ? …. read on…...

NSDL is the nodal agency implementing e-governance in the most taxing department of country, yes you guessed it, the Income Tax Department (ITD). The agency and ITD have recently sent emails to persons whose tax was deducted on payments like Salary, interest, contracts, rent, commissions etc. The email and the statement in FORM 26AS basically asks you to keep track of taxes paid on your behalf to your account with tax authorities so that credit can be claimed for these on your return.

So how does one ensure that the taxes get deposited in your account?

First and foremost make sure that you have a Permanent Account Number,

Second, make sure you give it to the person who is deducting tax from your payment and;

Third (the most difficult and impossible task) Register with the NSDL site so that you can track if the guy/organization that has deducted money has not misused it.

While registering appears to be a very simple process beware of the pitfalls ahead. ITD firmly believes in the age old maxim, “NOTHING IS CERTAIN BUT DEATH and TAXES. And therefore you should “unlearn” a couple of things and also think of giving up your favorite food, favorite book, favorite music, favorite car and so on before you register with them.

While creating/registering PAN Holders account with NSDL, it will ask you about a secret question and answer, in case you forget your password. What it does not tell you is that it will also test your English language skills and set you challenges hitherto unknown. So if you are now ready to take the challenge, here it goes;

(extract from the registration page on the website of tin-nsdl.com)
" If you forget your passwordSecurity Question: (Select) -
Who is your favourite person from history?
Food you've always liked.
Which is your favourite book?
Which is your favourite colour?*
Which is your favourite tv show / movie?
Which is your favourite holiday destination?
Which is your favourite car?
Which is your favourite sport?
Which is your favourite music?
Which is your favourite cartoon character?
You are required to select a question and provide a secret answer that you can easily remember later. Your question and secret answer cannot contain your password.If you forget your password, the question and secret answer you provide will help NSDL verify your identity and reset your password.
Your Answer: *_________
Answer must be at least 6 characters and maximum 25 character long.It may contain numerals (0-9),upper and lowercase letters (A-Z, a-z) and special characters.Capitalisation matters. "
So if your favourite person in the history is Akbar or Nehru or for that matter Bush ! sorry folks, they are not good enough for ITD as their names have less than six characters and all it can say is that these people are 1characterless !!

And if you like Richard Bach’s One – you are a goner, you should make sure that next time you read a book it’s name is full of characters like @#&##* .

And if you like simple foods like rice, dal, roti, Sorry ! ITD says simple living and high thinking is prohibited. You must like food like lasagna, noodles etc. (Sorry Mr Mukesh Ambani you cannot register becoz your fav foods are dal, roti and rice)

And here is the mother of all secret questions. If your favourite color is red well either you spell it as RREEDD or start liking orange, Purple, apple green ……and so on, there is no place in this world for Red, White, Green, Blue. ITD now wants to paint the world in its own colors.

And if you……..so on…….

This is a testimony of how super intelligent some software engineers can be and how creative the government can get.

On a serious note, the initiative is laudable. But unfortunately it is like cleaning the floor of an open house set in a desert, every time you sweep away the dust and sand it creeps right back in. Unless you close the door and windows you can’t stop the sand from coming in. The department is doing the cleaning without closing the door so God almighty help them in their venture. And taxpayers who never have a say in the process, good luck to them too.