Greedy Governance, Growing Corruption, Grieving Public
MARCH 20, 2012
By V Ravindran, Advocate
THE Budget exercises, are supposed to be primarily intended to provide policies, which should push the growth trajectories and protect the weaker sections. For the last one decade, the Budget exercises have by and large been a ritual far away from framing sound policies. The taxation had received the utmost attention, generation of revenue by hook or crook had been the focussed effort of the Government.
No policy worth implementation across the country have been attempted to prevent corruption, which is all pervasive today. It is ironical that government had introduced a negative list of services for taxation, when the positive list itself did not settle clearly in the phase of long 18 years. People in the trade and industry, cannot forget the confusions which arose when the omnibus Tariff entry No.68 (All other goods not elsewhere specified) introduced as one of the specified commodity for levy of Excise duty in the year 1975, prior to alignment of Central Excise Tariff with Customs Tariff in 1985. Time alone is going to tell the stories.
With the assertion of the Hon'ble Finance Minister that the Parliament has the right to retrospectively amend laws, only shows the rigid attitude and greed governance. That the framers of law had erred time and again and the Courts have found the law as defective, should have been a matter of fact and the law makers are supposed to accept the deficiencies for future correction.
On the contrary, the law makers, through the back door means, brought out consistently the retrospective amendments so frequently in the last decade, particularly to nullify the effect of Supreme Court's decision on the position of law (whether it was in on Income Tax, Central Excise, Customs or Service Tax).
The retrospective amendments have the following effect:-
(i) There is absolutely no repenting attitude in the law makers and they are emboldened to make defective laws;
(ii) Courts are made only a testing ground and the adverse test results are cured through retrospective legislation;
(iii) Affected parties pay through their nose, what was not collected by them, with interest, penalties and ofcourse huge cost of litigation;
(iv) People lose faith in the law makers and are not sure if they are complying with the laws correctly.
(v) Litigations mount [Government is sure that either way it would win, ultimately through retrospective legislation].
In the name of simplification, trust on assessee, the procedural compliance have been complicated over the years on assesses, with no accountability on executives/authorities. The following are few to mention:-
1. Frequent changes in laws and procedure, year after year and within a year too;
2. Complex return forms, declarations, statements and statistics to be furnished;
3. Frequency of returns – monthly returns, quarterly returns or half-yearly returns;
4. In the current Budget too, the Service Tax returns have been made monthly or quarterly instead the half-yearly ones.
5. Huge penalties, under different provisions under same Act, perhaps a way to generate revenue through imposition of penalties; (Ironically with defective laws);
6. Audit menace, invariably resulting in litigation (bribe apart);
7. Distinct advantage in law favouring state and weakening assessee in the matter of demands of dues always under extended time-frame, regardless of facts, evidences on record and by demeaning the compliance of assessees during the period of dispute, delayed or non-sanction of refunds.
8. Callous approach to adjudication process leading to injustice to assessees, forcing litigations for every trivial issues, higher cost of business and loss of time.
9. Continued discretionary powers to authorities - a nightmare to assessees and breeding ground for corruption. Non-responsive governing bodies, apex institutions and vigilance actions, embolden the inter-face authorities at field level and demoralize assessees.
Budget, 2012, with sweeping changes, particularly in Service Tax, is bound to trigger tons of litigations and harass every citizen of the country. When the Taxes are imposed beyond reasonable limits, the economy of the country would certainly get affected. People are sure that the reasonable limits have crossed already, that their contribution towards exchequer is not put to use for the intended purpose, there is huge leakage of revenue and that it would be time to retaliate in the peaceful path.
Will the opposition play constructive role to prevent the trend, grossly detrimental to the interest of the common man?
Whatever the result, if the proposed laws become real, harder days are ahead for the assessees …
