Taxing senior citizens
Soon the National Budget will be announced. Many senior citizens of modest means who are subsisting on their savings or are still forced to work for a living have been waiting for a long time for some relief from taxes that are heavily eroding their savings. While the sky-rocketing prices of essentials are taking a heavy toll of their earnings and savings, there are other direct/indirect taxes constantly chipping away at what remains, VAT on practically everything, this Fee, that Fee etc. etc. Present anomalies in tax are:
1.The individual exemption of Income Tax on salary is the same whether you are 25 years old or like me, 75 years.
2. Medical exemptions are also the same. But as you grow older, these expenses increase sharply for doctors, medicines, medical tests, hospitalization etc.
3. 10% tax is deducted from all savings in banks, financial institutions and government Sanchay Patras. Is this fair for the senior citizens? Even savings in BDT based on foreign currency remittances from children to old parents are not spared. Is this just?
I am sure other senior citizens will come up with more such examples. As far as I am concerned, I still have to work 8-10 hours a day for my living, usually walk or take a rickshaw in the morning and at dusk, from/to Banani, if the traffic cops on the rickshaw-mukto Mohakhali Road are absent or lenient to an old man!!! My wife and I (total age 140 years), have 2 very caring children living abroad with families, we have survived a total of 12 major surgeries (no tax exemption ever received), live in a rented flat, have no car, while I do not have (or need) even a mobile, ATM, Credit/Debit Cards and other modern 'conveniences' let loose on a gullible public to induce even more inflation.
I have been paying taxes regularly since 1955 and have lived, I hope, an honest life due to which I have suffered huge financial losses because I refused to compromise with corrupt practices or trusted 'friends' (but that is another long and dismal story). I am fortunate and thank the Almighty, that now, I am at a stage when I do not owe a paisa to anyone and have as clear a conscience as it is possible for a human being to have in the 21st Century! So will the caretaker government cast a favourable eye on those of us who are 60, 65,70 or more in the next budget?
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