Income Tax Department suddenly demands tax from my retired father for a 2011 notice- after 10+ years of complete silence
My father is a senior citizen and a retired Central Government employee. He has filed his returns honestly for decades. No dues, no notices, no issues for years.
Then in 2022, the Income Tax Department suddenly wakes up and starts demanding money for a tax issue from 2011- more than a decade later.
No proper explanation.
No calculation shared.
No original order provided.
Just a cold one-line reply saying the “demand is correct and collectible.”
Ten-plus years of silence from the department. Ten-plus years of returns processed without any demand. And now they act as if limitation laws don’t exist.
This is what the “faceless” tax system looks like on the ground for ordinary people. Automated intimidation with zero accountability and zero human responsibility.
Meanwhile, big defaulters and high-profile cases somehow drag on or disappear. Honest salaried pensioners get chased endlessly over old demands the department itself slept on.
My father spent his entire career serving the government. In return, the same system is harassing him in retirement over something it ignored for over a decade.
This doesn’t feel like an isolated error. It feels systemic- old demands being resurrected, citizens forced to prove their innocence again and again because the department refuses to clean its own records.
Is this “ease of living”?
Has anyone else faced something similar — decade-old tax demands suddenly appearing out of nowhere with no proper reasoning?