Rajasva Gyan Sangam to Karma Sangam
TIOL-DDT 2870
17 06 2016
Friday
KARMANYE Vaadhikaraste - You have the right (power) to work only….
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• There should be respect for the rule of law among all citizens, and even fear of the long arm of the law for those who evade taxes.
• Tax administrators must create a feeling of trust among people & ensure people don't fear them.
• India is today at a unique stage in its history, and the high aspirations of its people need to be nurtured by the Government.
• ‘RAPID' charter for tax administrators –Revenue, Accountability, Probity, Information and Digitization.
• Tax officers' behavior should be soft and sober.
• Erase the fear of harassment from the minds of taxpayers.
• Make it easy to pay taxes and difficult to avoid.
• People of this country are not dishonest... and have no problem in paying taxes, but somewhere they have some problem... understand that problem and try to remove it.
If you become taxpayer-friendly, then taxes will automatically come to you. |
PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi yesterday urged the IRS officers of CBDT and CBEC to turn Gyan Sangam into a Karma Sangam, so that the ideas generated from this conference lead to concrete action on the ground. The Prime Minister tweeted, "Had a great interaction with tax administrators at Rajasva Gyan Sangam. This is first time CBDT & CBEC are holding a simultaneous conference. Officers shared their views on issues ranging from digitization, voluntary tax compliance, increasing the tax base & other crucial topics.".
In a meeting that was not open to the Press, the Prime Minister interacted with the tax officers. 15 (out of about 300 who attended) IRS officers of CBDT and CBEC (five of them Assistant Commissioners with less than five years of experience) made their suggestions to the PM.
PM knows - Revenue Comes on its own: The Prime Minister made a very significant observation - that 92% of the revenue just flows into the treasury from self assessment, advance tax, TDS etc., The 1.5 lakh strong army of tax officers raise just 8%.
THE IRS View - what they told the PM: If you put together 'THE' and 'IRS', what you get is 'THEIRS'. It is ultimately 'THEIRS'.
These are some of the suggestions/views the IRS officers told the PM.
1. Confused - what should be our priority - tax enforcement or taxpayer friendly attitude. We are confused; we are not sure whether tax enforcement is our priority or to be friendly with taxpayers. This is a dilemma that many young IRS officers face and which senior IRS officers refuse to clarify and so over a period of time, the department is full of senior officers who have this dilemma. A young IRS officer told me recently, "I can't understand this tamasha of assessee friendly gesticulations - after all my job is to collect tax from him and he will not like my actions - there is no scope for friendship with him.". A working Chairman of the Board said in one of our meetings, "at the end of the day we are revenue collectors - and that is what matters to us." Recently a young IRS officer asked this question to a senior Judge who told him, "the taxpayer is your master and you are his servant; it is the taxpayer (citizen) who has appointed you and your boss Narendra Modi. It is he who gave you the power to enforce taxes. You should not treat him like a friend; you should treat him like your master. Your Commissioner, your Chairman, Your Finance Minister and your Prime Minister - they are all - all subordinate to him."
2. Tax Facilitation Act: There should be a Tax Facilitation Act written in simple language in all the regional languages, which can be understood by the common man. The Act should specify the norms and policies for collecting any tax from the citizens. There should be a stipulation that any law (notification) will be explained in local simple language.
3. Physical infrastructure in offices should be improved: Augment the resources and tools of the tax officers so that they can be better equipped.
4. Make e-governance internally too: We have e-filing, e-payment etc for the assessees, but still most of the internal communication within the tax offices is still on paper. E-communication within various offices should be enforced.
Search Google for "how not to pay taxes in India."
THE Prime Minister said that the query, "how to pay taxes in India" throws up seven crore responses on Google. But if you search "how not to pay taxes in India.", you get twelve crore responses!
Service Tax - Speedy Disbursal of Refund Claims
CBEC had by Circular No. 187/6/2015-Service Tax dated 10th November, 2015 launched a scheme to fast track sanction of refund of accumulated CENVAT credit to exporters of services.
The Board now clarifies:
1. It is reiterated that this scheme is not a substitute for the various notifications but is meant to complement them and is aimed at enabling ease of doing business. It has to operate within the general parameters of the notifications governing such refunds.
2. This scheme is applicable only to service tax registrants who are exporters of services, with respect to refund claims under rule 5 of the CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004, which have been filed on or before 31-3-2015, and which have not been disposed of as on the date of the issue of the circular dated 10-11-2015. Claims which have been remanded are out of the purview of this scheme.
Certificate by Auditor: Board clarifies;
It must be understood that auditors while discharging their duties are bound by the provisions of the statute governing them as well as Guidance Notes, Accounting Standards etc relating to their profession. The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India has issued Guidance Notes on reports and certificates issued by auditors. These Guidance Notes relate to situations where the auditor has freedom with respect to the wording of a certificate as well as to situations where he has to adhere to a prescribed format. In both situations the auditor has to indicate the manner in which the audit was done, assumptions, limitations in scope and reference to information and explanations obtained in the certificate. Adherence of the auditors to these requirements should not be considered to be violations of the circular. If at all, by mentioning that they have adhered to the various legal and accounting requirements, they are adding value to their certificate.
CBEC Circular No. 195/05/2016-Service Tax., Dated June 15, 2016
Customs - Export Duty Imposed on Sugar
GOVERNMENT has imposed a 20% export duty on Raw Sugar, white or refined sugar. There is already a 20% export duty on white sugar as per the Export Tariff - The Second Schedule to the Customs Tariff Act. This was exempted to a nil rate by Sl. No. 9A of the Table to Notification No. 27/2011-Cus dated 1.3.2011. Now, the Government has omitted Sl. No. 9A in the notification thereby restoring the 20% export duty under the Second Schedule.
Notification No 37/2016-Customs., Dated: June 16, 2016
Customs - New Exchange Rates from Today
CBEC has notified new exchange rates for Imported Goods and for Export Goods with effect from today. The USD is 68.05 for imports and 66.35 Rupees for exports.
Notification No. 87/2016-Cus (NT)., Dated: June 16, 2016
Should Court Proceedings be telecast?
THE Bombay High Court has recently dismissed a petition seeking an order to allow video recording and telecast of Court Proceedings. The HC made some interesting observations:
Nobody suggests that courts are free from error. Throughout recorded human history, they never have been. The annals of mankind's progress are littered with instances of courts in error. Yet judicial systems, adversarial or otherwise, have endured and are an integral to what we now accept it means to be a 'civilized' and 'civil' society. All known and recognized judicial systems acknowledge the possibility of error. Therefore: courts of appeal, and provisions for review and revision, all in-built corrective mechanisms. There are permissible and legitimate steps available to all courts to correct course. This has worked for two millenia. It works still. There is no basis for the assertion that without video recording some great evil will continue to be perpetrated.
Our judicial system is adversarial, not gladiatorial. Our courts are not the amphitheatres of Roman times, though much of our law is descended from Roman law. What happens in Court on a minute to-minute basis is often unrelated or tangential to the final result.
This dialectic of questioning, probing, testing is constant. Taken out of context, a single question, sometimes sharply worded, from the Bench is apt to be misread. The entire context and colour changes. Our attempt as judges is to remove emotion from the judicial decision-making process.
Some Advocates tend very often to be obstreperous, even downright obnoxious. Courts and judges know how to deal with such situations: selective deafness, a gentle chiding, something light-hearted and, if it gets too much, "Move along, Mr. So-and-So".
Sometimes, a fleeting moment of good-natured levity defuses a potentially volatile exchange. At other times, there is a passing moment of waspishness. It happens on either side of the Bar. Both sides know well to take these moments in their stride and to not make over much of them. In live broadcasts, these moments are likely to be taken wholly out of context and out of proportion. With cameras omnipresent, many lawyers, perhaps tempted into seeing this as a shot at some sort of two penny publicity, would give free rein to their thus far thankfully constrained histrionic tendencies. That is unlikely to be very helpful from any perspective.
We, as judges and lawyers, know only too well that trials are unpredictable. A trial's path twists and turns through its progression. A litigant's fortunes may rise one day only to flounder the next, or even a few minutes later. Lawyers and judges are trained to take this in their stride, and to make no assessment till the entire trial is complete and all the evidence is in. Then begins the process of analysing that evidence, collating it, and presenting it to the Judge in a particular fashion, of advocating a particular interpretation, suggesting one particular sequence of causality as preferable to another, and cushioning all this in the framework of what the law allows and does not allow. These are necessary safeguards; and it is to prevent a 'splicing', a stripped-from-context dissemination of nuggets of evidence yet in the process of being gathered, that we in this Court do not allow the public availability of evidence transcripts. Ensuring that the right to a fair and impartial hearing or a trial is never compromised is the paramount responsibility of a court. That responsibility is entirely compromised, and those essential rights threatened and curtailed, by allowing televising of our proceedings. The impact on parties, witnesses and judges is bound to be severe.
What, in short, the Petitioners seek is to strait-jacket the proceedings in court for one and only one purpose: to develop a weapon with which to pillory and terrorize judges and so to wholly compromise the judicial decision-making process. What the Petitions say to judges is this: "Watch out. You are on candid camera. We will drag you before the public if you dare contradict us." All this, knowing that before the general public, and in public media, judges are the most voiceless in public service. We speak through only through our judgments. We cannot defend them in public forums. What the Petitioners seek is not the right to criticize judges' decisions - that is a right given to all - but the opportunity to flog judges in the market square.
There is a clear difference between a litigant or a lawyer or even a member of the public attending Court and of the general public using courts as spectacles or arenas for amusement, diversion and entertainment. The dangers we speak of risk reducing the gravity, solemnity and dignity of these proceedings into something bordering on the farcical, and even more deadly, the ignominious.
Until Monday with more DDT
Have a nice weekend.
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