There are more than a lakh tax cases pending in courts and various tribunals, holding back Rs 64,244 crore in both direct and indirect taxes. “The major reasons for pendency of 1,31,780 tax cases are excessive burden on existing tribunals and courts, and shortage of human resources with tax departments, ” junior finance minister S S Palanimanickam told the Lok Sabha today.
He said that there were 68,382 direct tax related cases pending — income tax appellate tribunals had 29,505 cases, High Courts had 34,467 cases and Supreme Court had 4,410 pending cases, blocking over Rs 18,900 crore as on September 30, 2009.
As regard indirect tax, there are about 63,400 cases pending in Customs, Excise & Service Tax Appellate Tribunals (46,930 cases), High Courts (14,077) and Supreme Court (2,391) blocking over Rs 45,300 crore as on December 31, 2009.
Mr. Gupta has finally hit on the right nail.
Yes, it is most urgently needed, in the interest of the heath of this country, its security and moral fibre of the nation. The lure of post-retirement cushy jobs including uncalled for and illegitimate extensions granted to the pets of the governments, as well as promoting people out of turn, have created a specially protected class of mafia bureaucrats who are more equal than all the others, certainly more honest and absolutely transparent vis-à-vis the mafia, and no less competent either.
The fact that one can get such extensions, or post-superannuation parking slots, ensures continuation of the hitherto enjoyed perks, and hence a criminal class begins, after about a decade in the respective Services, getting trained for the KILL when they reach the age of 55 or so. By the age of 50 itself, these creatures are dreaded by by even their superiors for whom they really are no more required to bother. Because, they have already hitched their life and future to much bigger powers-Political and/or the underworld. They help their political-underworld Godfathers topple governments in the states or even at the Centre, they start dictating to the political masters, they supersede their seniors/contemporaries, maim or kill anyone who dares cross their path, they go to any extent-of course with enormous money-power at their beck and call, all safely parked in foreign (mainly Swiss) banks, they are bigger than their shadows and, at times, even their political-bureaucratic memtors.
So, it is in the national interest that the suggestions of Mr. Gupta deserve immediate attention of those in whose hands presently the responsibility of protecting/guarding the security and sovereignty lie constitutionally. And also morally.
If any one is serious about real reforms, one of the first things to do is to stop all post retirement jobs and posts.
This is the root of most evil.
I don’t only mean revenue services, but all services, including the IAS, IPS, and the higher judiciary.
If there are such posts as ombudsman, different commissions, etc. – only serving officers should be allowed to opt for these posts.
How can any one explain the rationale that a serving normal govt. officer becomes old to retire at 60, but once he goes out on deputation, he becomes physically and mentally younger and can continue for another 2 to 5 years depending upon where he goes.
The result is most of the post retirement posts are filled will sick and useless people who have never worked during their service career, but some how manage to get the plum postings.
It is indeed a matter for great concern that our government departments do not care to recover so much amount of tax due to it. Ordinary people like us pay tax regularly, and we are regularly harassed by the authorities for nothing. Only for one reason is this harassment-bribe taking. If we are allowed to know the details of the defaulters we shall definitely find only very big people. Because only they can go to High Courts, Supreme Court, by engaging very expensive advocates. We cannot. So in our small cases like us, the ITOs harass us like inhumans. In the Service Tax department, every Return must be accompanied by 3,500/- and otherwise it will not be accepted. So, only suffering for us, and the big people fight and do not pay taxes for so many years that the total is Rs. 64,244 crores.
God save our country.
It would be better abd indeed advisable for the Ministry now to constitute a High Powered Com- mittee of retired IRS officers of both the CBEC and CBDT, with well-known unimpeachable integrity and a reack record of proven efficiency and courage of conviction to go into the (a) the reasons of the respective figures for the two divisions; (b) the veracity of and correctness of the figures, and (c) to examine if the high figures in respect of the amount reflect the failure on the part of any officer to take timely and proper action for recovery.
It is also necessary to clarify the particular Financial and Assessment years involved in these figures of cases locked up before the Courts and, further, the no. of frivolous cases included in the nos. presented to the Minister by the two Deptts. It is quite likely that, a very considerable amount of the demand can no more be recovered for the reason of the death/closure of the assessees/businesses or companies, or the assessees might have already been declared bankrupt. How many of the assessees included in the statistics presented to the Parliament are absconding, or pertain to non-existent/bogus cases shouls also be clarified.
It is hoped that the top bosses of the CBDT and the CBEC watch this site for their personal as well as official enlightenment and do take suitable action too.
The veracity of the figures is doubtful. @ndly, the total amount reported also is likely to be incorrect. This is because, in this jinxed department, covered inside and out by the stinking filth of corruption, from the top to the bottom, record keeping was very badly (and deliberately) hit in the early 1980s by the officers’ and staff unions’ pressures (supported and very comfortably taken care of by a section of the CSS officers, duly paid for their services by those interested) to increase posts based on bogus/inflated workload. A very large number of bogus cases were created over years by these people, while their dishonest bosses enjoyed the freebies and, as a result, huge uncollectible and absolutely demands were created.
In addition, there was a very novel, unwritten system of making money widely prevalent in the Department for about 40 years or even more, until very recently. The dishonest officers and their corrupt underlings used to create bogus demands by deliberately making untenable huge additions to the returned income in the “regular and genuine cases” in the months of January-March every year, for patently harassing and milking tax payers, with the connivance of even more corrupt practitioners. After the end of the financial years, these corrupt animals all joined and hatched plans to call the tax payers to the ITO and strike a deal with the understanding that, the uncollected bogus demands so raised would not be “carried forward” in the then prevalent “Demand & Collection Registers”, the very document which was the basis for ages in the department for reckoning the amount of outstanding demand/refunds as on any given date, AND the records also would be destroyed (all with the full knowledge and complicity of the top bosses and their agents, i.e., the practitioners who shared the booty with the ITOs and their staff (like stray dogs sharing the waste food thrown in the garbage after a feast!). So these demands were never reflected/reported.
There was another variety of this nefarious practice, much more heinous than the former mode. There was the annual ritual of a 3-month-old period of house-keeping, when field officers and staff used to bring forward in the current years’ registers the outstanding demands in each case, many pending for even 20-30 years, pending refunds due to be issued/adjusted/penalty proceedings, etc. A very large number of the breed of the people mentioned above openly indulged in just not carrying forward the figures/details-and very large amounts of money exchanged hands for not doing so; of course, many tax payers suffered in the process too for not refusing to pay bribes for getting long pending refund claims (arising out of appellate decisions) sine these dishonest people DID NOT carry forward a majority of such figures. All this again with the full knowledge of the top brass!
Then there was another menace. For a long time, a very lucrative “business” of bogus refunds rampantly was run in the IT department by some criminally-minded ITPs/CAs (now most respectable citizens of the country, many giving ceremonial annual speeches at various centres on the budgets every year and sharing the dias with the FMs, etc.!), in full cooperation with and connivance of the departmental officers/officials from the top to the bottom. [Many years ago, a newspaper in Chennai, now ceased publishing, had published a most enlightening article on the modus operandi of this lucrative business, in which a very minimal capital was required, if at all-because, in most cases, the first initiative was invariably taken /encouragement given by an insider-the ITO/ITI/clerks.]
This menace had been started by the CAs, no doubt, by taking advantage of the non-technological days in the late 1940s/early 1950s and carried with unthinkable turnover and returns through the 1960s and even the first half of the 1970s, when these highly qualified members of the ICAI started feeling the pressure of severe and cut-throat competition from their lesser brethren, the mush-dreaded (even today, in small towns/muffassils) Income-tax Practitioners all over the country. Many of these creatures were non-matriculates, many were found to be operating with forged graduation certificates, usulaaly under a similarly minded CA uncle/father/brother-in-law (naturally, as charity must always begin at home).
The position of the captain of this “bogus IT Refund INDUSTRY” (as by the beginning of the 1970s, the founders of this ‘business’ had indeed run this trade to have made it deserving to be called an industry, and a most competitive and high-return one)had to be yielded to a very young, energetic and innovative ITP who took it to the dizzy, glamorous and dazzling heights comparable to that of today’s IPL, an industry of multi-crore turnover per annum!. The scope of this industry engulfed in its sway various Race Courses (for using their forged winnings/TDS certificates), almost all income tax offices all over the country (and in remote locations like Indore, Jabalpur, small towns in Gujarat-West Bengal-Maharashtra, etc., Chennai-Bombay-Ahmedabad-Pune-Hyderabad-Bangalore-like metros of the 1970-1980s,et al), Banks, RBI offices, etc.
This innovative person encouraged his followers to use forged SBI/RBI/ITOs’ seals, rubber stamps, etc. Bogus returns of income showing bogus names/addresses, etc., were filed at various ITOs in the country, along with bogus/forged TDS certificates from non-existent employers/companies/firms/offices, forged TDS certificates from Race Courses in Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Calcutta, etc., and even bogus/false IT challan counter-foils bearing the statutory round seals/designation stamps of ITOs, and even forged stamps of banks/RBI, etc., and also of the then tax collection centres, and thereby collected huge, mind-boggling amounts of bogus refunds for decades, running in all to crores and crores of rupees.
Several investigative agencies, including the IT deptt. itself took half-hearted action against these by-then millionaire criminals, but miserably failed ultimately ceding the lost ground back to the criminals, now running colleges, schools, hospitals, bogus charitable trusts, etc. Even the CAG never gathered enough courage to ever take up a thorogh study of the amount of govt. revenues thus lost to these refund-scam fraudsters, and has never been known to be even half-interested in doing so. This is despite the fact that, quite a few of these non-qualified/ineligible ITPs were found to have falsely signed statements and filed the same before banks masquerading/representing themselves as CAs!
Any way, the sum total of all this discussion about this still-prevalent (but perhaps on a smaller scale) industry is that the total amount involved in this fraudulent operation of 4 decades has never been reflected in any official statistics/report, including those of the CAG.
In this background, it is respectfully submitted that the figures presented may not be accurate or even remotely correct. And, in a large number of cases forming part/basis of these figures, the records are missing too. This aspect needs attention, in national interest only.