CA Sandeep Kanoi
Recently while visiting home page of CBEC website I have noticed that on the page CBEC has placed a link titled ‘ Defaulters of Customs & Central Excise ‘ . When I clicked on this link I observed that the link is displaying list of defaulters area wise and covers defaulters from Major Cities of India. Putting the list on the website may be a major weapon of recovery for CBEC as no one would like to see his name on the list of defaulters publicly. Putting the name and addresses of the defaulters publicly seems to be a move to ‘name and shame’ the tax defaulter.
Website advices Defaulters to pay up their dues immediately. It further say that CBEC will reward the informers in cases of recovery.
Reward scheme extended to cases of recovery -A suitable reward upto 5% of the amount recovered can be given to any informer who gives information regarding the whereabouts, assets, movable and immovable properties of persons or companies from whom arrears of duty, tax, fine, penalty etc. are recoverable under the Customs Act, 1962, the Central Excise Act, 1944 or Service Tax Act, 1994. The quantum of reward will be decided by the Chief Commissioner concerned.
Defaulters List Format not seems to be same for all the regions but all the list shows the Name and address of the defaulter, amount of default, PAN No. or Registration No. of defaulters in addition to all other details. Most of the list seems to be not not updated from long time to cover the new defaulters of Customs and Central Excise. It is been further observed that even the file format of the list is not same for all the regions. Some list are in EXCEL format, some lists are in PDF format while others are in HTM format.
Good move by CBEC but there should be a system of updation of list to add the name of new defaulters and for faster removal of the name of the Assessee who has cleared the default from the defaulter list. CBEC should further take care in adding the name of a person in the list of defaulters and should add the name of a person only if he failed to pay after he has been given reasonable opportunity to make good the default.
Website is currently displaying the list of defaulters from the following regions Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhopal, Calicut, Chandigarh, Chennai, Cochin, Coimbatore, Delhi , Goa, Gujarat, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jamshedpur, Kerala, Kolkata , Lucknow, Mangalore, Meerut, Ghaziabad , Noida, Mumbai , Mysore, Nagpur, NOIDA, Pune , Ranchi, Shillong, Surat, Vadodara.
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