A sanitation worker in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, received an unexpected shock when the Income Tax Department sent him a notice claiming he owed taxes on an income of ₹34 crore. According to a report by The Times of India, this comes just days after a similar case where a juice vendor in Aligarh received a tax notice for ₹7.5 crore.

The sanitation worker, Karan Kumar, said he did not understand the notice at first. But when he got help from others, he was in complete shock. “I got the jolt of my life,” he said. Kumar, who works at an SBI branch in Agra’s Khair area, earns just ₹15,000 a month on a contract basis. He suspects that someone may have misused his PAN card details.

According to the letter dated March 22, the Income Tax Department stated that Karan Kumar had not filed his income tax return for the financial year 2019-20. 

The letter mentioned that, as per records, he had an income of ₹33,85,85,368 during that period. Kumar recalled submitting his PAN and other documents to a former employer in Noida in 2019, raising concerns that his details might have been misused.

Nain Singh, an IT officer from Aligarh, explained that Kumar’s PAN details in the system showed a high income. He assured that the case would be reviewed under the faceless tax assessment process. “We will put all these cases in faceless I-T assessment, and if we find that their PAN cards are misused, we will carry out a probe,” Singh said.

A few days earlier, Md Rahees, a juice vendor in Aligarh, also received an income tax notice for ₹7.5 crore. His family expressed disbelief over the claim, as they struggle to afford daily meals. His mother questioned, “We struggle for our daily meals... If we had so much money, why would our son have to work so hard?”

 

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