The trouble with having too many bank accounts

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tax returns. Second, a minimum balance needs to be maintained in every bank account. So, the greater the number of bank accounts, the greater the minimum balance that needs to be maintained.

And if that is not done, fines need to be paid. In fact, in a recent answer to a question raised in the Rajya Sabha, the government informed that since 2018 the public sector banks and major private banks (Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, IndusInd Bank, ICICI Bank and IDBI Bank) had collected ₹21,044 crore as a charge for non-maintenance of minimum balance. Of course, not all of this must have been because of one too many bank accounts.

Third, god forbid, if anything happens to a parent, the children need to run around first establishing with the banks that they are really who they claim to be and then closing all these accounts. Believe me this is not a pleasant experience especially at a point of time when there is so much grief. Fourth, it is your hard earned money after all and you need to at least know where it is parked.

To conclude, thanks to increasing digitization of the tax-filing process one can now know exactly about the banks where the money has been deposited. If you don’t, check out your Form 26AS and shut down a few bank accounts if you have one too many. Vivek Kaul is the author Bad Money.