By Ajay Agnihotri
When clouds seem, smart guys place on their cloaks
When excellent leaves fall, the winter is at hand
When the sun sets, who doth not look for evening?
(Richard III, 2.3)
Last handful of weeks have spelt such problems for the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) that they would be reminded of this Shakespeare’s quote above. Unfortunately, though a typical individual would take and workout affordable care, the CBIC is hurtling into an abyss ‘where angels fear to tread’.
The Supreme Court came down heavily on the department’s legal incompetence in the well-known ‘Canon’ case. This was speedily followed by the Madras High Court chastising the division on the situation of ‘proper officer’ in the ‘Quantum Coal’ case. The net impact is that every single demand notice issued by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) due to the fact 2012 has been held illegal since the officers issuing the notice had been not authorised by the CBIC to do so.
This battle does not finish right here. The next significant blow may well be that every single regulation and circular ever notified by the CBIC is illegal. Earlier, I had by means of this paper brought it to the notice of the government that there is no notification issued beneath Section 4 of the Central Boards of Revenue Act, 1963, which constituted the Central Board of Excise and Customs. Section 4 of the Act laid down that the process for the functioning of the Board would be notified by way of guidelines for the goal of regulating the transaction of business enterprise by each and every Board.
Every order created or act carried out in accordance with such guidelines shall be deemed to be the order or act, as the case may well be, of the Board. Fifty-six years have gone by and no guidelines for functioning of the Board have been notified. The ‘Board’ continues to function as they uncover handy.
There could not be a greater time than now for a overview of the functioning of the Board and how powers are exercised. A starting should really be created by the finance minister by ordering an external audit of the defective notification issued in 2012, which has led to the Canon judgment. And officers, serving or retired, should really be duly sanctioned.
For far also lengthy India has endured an incompetent tax bureaucracy, which calls itself a qualified tax administration. While direct taxes board is responsive of the altering instances policymakers in the CBIC have time once again exposed their lack of business enterprise sense though drafting laws and procedures.
The final 4 years have noticed adequate angst becoming expressed in print and the social media on the complexity in GST laws. On the Customs side, we have not noticed any reform except for a poorly conceived faceless assessment, which is stated to be largely kept afloat by means of one hundred-odd day-to-day messages more than WhatsApp!
The organisation is beleaguered with employees shortages with no workaround possessing been discovered due to the fact the final decade or more. Across all levels there are a enormous quantity of vacancies. The IRS cadre is stated to be brief by more than 2,000 officers, though other executive levels have more than 18,000 vacancies. Every field formation functions at about 50% strength. No urgency has been shown in filling these vacancies.
It appears no one in the CBIC heard the Prime Minister’s iconic address on Indian bureaucracy in Parliament final month and Nitin Gadkari’s speech on the inauguration of the NHAI creating which has gone viral. In the words of Muhammad Iqbal and with pardoned adjustments:
‘… Ki fikar kar nadan! Musibat aane wali hai;
Teri barbadiyon ke mashware hain asmanon mein;
Zara dekh uss ko jo kuch ho raha hai, hone wala hai;
Dhara kya hai bhala ehd-e-kuhan ki dasatnon mein;
Ye khamoshi kahan tak? Lazzat-e-faryad paida kar;
Zameen par tu ho aur teri sada ho asmanon mein’
The author, a former IRS officer, is an advocate