GAPS BETWEEN VISION AND ACTION...

     CBEC has declared 2015 as the Year of Taxpayer Services. While declaring this, they might have had a vision that they will extend all the required services to the taxpayers in a user-friendly manner while collecting taxes from them.

     Re-structuring and re-organisation of the Commissionerates have taken place in Oct-2014, but unfortunately, majority of the new commissionerates are still functioning from the same place – lack of infrastructure, facilities etc. further aggravates the acute shortage of staff especially Inspectors and ministerial staff, who are the first line of interaction between the Department & the trade.

     Recently, revenue analysis of income of the Govt., reported in various publications, has shown a sharp increase, in the Apr-June quarter. Obviously, the Board is very happy about the uptrend in collections of ST, but no one is bothered about the leakage of ST collections which is beyond anyone’s imagination – collections are there but the same is not being deposited as ST in the Govt. account and the dearth of staff is hampering the work of unearthing these evasions. The unhealthy trend does not end here – in the Commissionerates there are no Commissioners and in the Zones there are no Chief Commissioners, but the show goes on.

     When the field formations are headless, what level of service can be extended to the tax-payers !

     Normally in CBEC, by the end of December, all those Group ‘A’ officers who are due for transfer/rotation, their names are displayed on the CBEC website. Since their names are in the transfer list, they stop attending to important work like adjudication, recovery etc. and only attend to the day-to-day work. This year, August month is almost over, and the transfer order is still only over the horizon. The editor of Taxindia Online has recently published a revealing article on the same. Now the Board is fully staffed but still is unable to steer the Department either at the macro level or the micro level.

    Unless the level of infrastructure is improved, both in terms of physical structures and in terms of staff, and the system for collection of information on ST evaders is improved, the Dept. will continue to be on auto-pilot mode. When we are unable to control lakhs of ST assessees who are already registered with the Department, (let alone those who are not registered with the Department), what will happen when GST is introduced and millions of assessees will register with the Department.

     The Department has held enough seminars and released a number of blueprints, roadmaps for the implementation of GST, but the time has come to introspect as to whether the present setup can sustain the rigors of GST, with the traditional mindset, approach, lackadaisical approach to responsibility, putting blame on subordinate officers by dodging responsibility, etc.

      A prime example is the recent shifting of the office of the DGST from Mumbai to New Delhi and renaming it as DG-GST. This is also another headless Directorate !! The speed at which the Board has dismantled it, the same speed is not being shown in the matter of posting of New Delhi officers and allocation of working space with at least the minimum of facilities.

      It is seen that senior officers have a bright future, who have chosen to keep mum and unfortunately the junior officers in the field always have to bear the brunt. The situation has already reached saturation levels and the newly promoted officers have started putting in their papers and some are waiting for the 7th Pay commission to put in their papers.

     Staff morale is at the lowest and the leadership qualities of the senior officers that should have come to the fore at this crucial juncture, is sadly missing !!

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