Times of India, "Desi sues firm over tax refunds"

An Indian employee of an information technology consulting company filed a lawsuit on Tuesday alleging he and other foreign workers were required to give their employers their tax return checks.
          Starting when he arrived in the United States from India in 2000, Gopi Vedachalam was ordered to sign over federal and state tax returns totaling about $25,000 (euro 21,010) to his employer, Tata America International Corporation, according to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court.
         If the judge certifies this suit merits class-action status, it could grow to include the approximately 5,000 foreign workers the company employs in the United States who may also have been allegedly required to give up their tax refunds, said Vedachalam's attorney, Steven Tindall. It could take until the end of the year for a judge to make that decision, attorneys said.
          Vedachalam said that when he was new to this country, he thought this was the correct procedure. He was shocked to find out it wasn't true, he said.
          "I felt humiliated about the way the treated us," he said.  "It's not fair to do it that way."

Lieff Cabraser is representing plaintiffs in this case.
Click here for more information on the Tata Tax Refunds lawsuit.