Tarzan in the Tax Jungle: How the Indian Middle Class Swings from Salary to Survival
Meet Tarzan. He’s educated, salaried, law-abiding, and hopelessly optimistic. Every month, he swings into his office with a smile, his ₹60,000-per-month vine of hope tightly gripped—only to find that the jungle he’s swinging through has been cleverly converted into a maze of taxes. And the government? Oh, they’re not the ones building ladders or leaving maps. No, they’re the ones hacking away the vines, pocketing the wood, and then selling Tarzan a ladder… with 18% GST.
How does he survive? No one knows. Not even him.
Tarzan’s jungle is a bureaucratic hellscape. Every fruit he picks—taxed. Every step he takes—taxed. Every breath he exhales? They’re probably drafting legislation for that too.
Welcome to the Jungle: Every Leaf Is a Levy
Let’s start with the basics: Income Tax. You see, Tarzan dares to earn more than ₹3 lakh a year. A sin, clearly. So he pays up—5%, 20%, 30%—whatever the slab, he coughs it up. Add in a 4% “health and education cess,” because nothing says nation-building like taxing the very people funding the nation.
Then comes Professional Tax. A special tribute he pays monthly to be reminded that being employed is a punishable offense. There’s no explanation for it. Just a deduction on your payslip and a vague promise that it goes to the state. For what? Don’t ask. You’re not professional enough to know.
Don’t forget EPF—because who needs money now when the government can generously lock it away till you’re old, retired, and hopefully too senile to notice the interest rate barely beats inflation?
Now swing into the GST pit. Grocery? Taxed. Electricity? Taxed. Swiggy? Extra spicy with 5% GST. Netflix? 18%. Even your shaving cream is taxed like it’s a luxury product—because apparently, grooming is a sin if you’re not an MP.
Fuel tax? Oh yes. Petrol prices include excise duty, VAT, cess, and heartbreak. Then there’s road tax—you pay this when you buy a vehicle. And just when you think you’re done, BAM! Toll booth. Because roads, apparently, are subscription-based now. Like Netflix, but with potholes.
The ₹60,000 Illusion: Swing High, Land Low
Let’s talk numbers. With a ₹60,000 salary, Tarzan earns ₹7.2 lakh a year. After income tax, EPF, professional tax, and all the backdoor indirect taxes, he takes home around ₹45,000 a month. Sounds doable?
Now subtract:
- ₹20,000 for rent or EMI
- ₹10,000 for groceries (that’s assuming you don’t eat like a tiger)
- ₹5,000 for fuel or public transport (half of which goes to the government again)
- ₹4,000 for utilities
- ₹3,000 for entertainment, because hey, even monkeys need a break
- ₹2,000 for medical emergencies
- ₹5,000 for the thousand things life throws at you when you least expect
Total: ₹49,000
Balance: Minus ₹4,000
This, dear reader, is called the monthly miracle. Every salaried middle-class Indian pulls it off. How? By skipping savings, cutting corners, and praying they don’t fall sick or find love.
And Then He Finds Jane – God Help Him
Ah, love in the jungle. Beautiful. Until you realize weddings cost more than a down payment on a house, and two people need more than one person’s broken salary.
Unless Jane brings her own salary vine, Tarzan’s treehouse collapses. Two people eating, traveling, falling sick, celebrating birthdays, buying clothes? Hah. That ₹45,000 net income starts looking like pocket change.
Add an EMI, a broken phone, a surprise visit to the in-laws, and you’ve got yourself a debt spiral faster than you can say “bhaiya, thoda discount do.”
And don’t you dare think of having a child. That baby will bankrupt you before it learns to speak. Education, healthcare, daycare, toys, birthday parties, pediatrician fees—all at taxable rates, of course.
Wait, Why Is He Paying for Everything Twice?
Let’s pause. If Tarzan pays fuel tax and road tax, why toll? If he pays professional tax, what’s the professional return? If he’s educated, why is he punished more than someone who skipped school and now earns more selling panipuri with zero taxes?
You know who earns more than our salaried jungle warrior?
The chaiwala outside his office.
The driver who dropped him off.
The YouTuber reviewing phones in broken English.
The street vendor selling momos at 1000% profit margins.
All of them? No TDS. No GST filings. No 30% slabs. Just pure, untaxed hustle.
Tarzan’s Silent Scream
Tarzan, the middle-class Indian taxpayer, pays for everything. He funds the subsidies he never gets. The schemes he’s never eligible for. The politicians’ salaries who never speak for him. He works 9-to-9, files his taxes, obeys the law—and gets nothing in return but stress and a passive-aggressive email from HR during appraisal season.
And yet, he stays silent. He doesn’t protest. Doesn’t riot. Doesn’t bargain. He believes “acche din” will come if he just works harder.
They won’t.
Conclusion: Time to Roar, Not Swing
This government—and let’s be honest, any government—doesn’t care until you make noise. The salaried middle class has been the perfect citizen: compliant, quiet, law-abiding, and chronically overburdened. And the reward? A front-row seat to the grand circus of governance where you pay for the tent, the clown’s costume, the fire show, and the elephant feed—only to be denied entry.
The problem isn’t just the taxation. It’s the lack of representation. It’s the absence of outrage. It’s the blind optimism that if you keep playing by the rules, the system will eventually reward you. It won’t. Not unless you stand up, speak out, and make yourself politically inconvenient.
Every vote matters, and the middle class has numbers. If even a fraction of this exhausted, overtaxed demographic refuses to be taken for granted, refuses to be distracted by hollow slogans and token gestures, it could jolt the system. But that requires the middle class to come together—not just on WhatsApp groups to forward jokes about petrol prices, but at the ballot box, at town halls, and on social media with clarity and courage.
Tarzan can no longer afford to just swing vine to vine, hoping for a breeze. The vines are thinning, the branches are burning, and the jungle is on fire.
So stop waiting. Stop coping. Start roaring.
Because if you don’t?
They’ll soon start taxing the silence too.
