Taxing reminders

The income tax department has sent letters to 105,000 people asking them to file their returns. If somebody refers to these letters as "notices", finance ministry officials are quick to point out these are not tax notices. They call them "gentle reminders" or "polite reminders". The advertisements which appeared in some Hindi language newspapers informing non-filers about such letters, however, used the word "notice". Either Finance Minister P Chidambaram
did not see the advertisement or did not entirely follow the Devanagari script.