An outsourcing contract to Infosys, India’s second-largest software company, has resulted in an unexpected reprieve for those with income to hide from the taxman. Irked by the contract, under which Infosys is processing tax returns filed online, and rattled by the prospect of more outsourcing, officials of the investigation wing of the income-tax department, the arm of the tax administration that conducts raids, have refused to step out of their offices for at least a month.
As a result, officials have not been able to conduct the socalled search and seizure operations, officialese for raids, during this period, even though many of these were in the works.
The union representing employees and officers has adopted this unusual mode of protest and said they would refuse to budge till the Central Board of Direct Taxes, or CBDT, the apex body for tax administration, meets their demands.
Since raids require officials to leave their offices and visit the taxpayers’ premises, such plans have had to be shelved until the agitation is called off.
A senior officer said raids have had to be postponed, reducing their effectiveness. “We have not been able to conduct raids in even those cases where investigations are already on. The success of raids largely depends on the timing, and this element has been badly affected by the agitation.” CBDT chairman SSN Moorthy told ET that the board had given employees whatever they wanted.
I-T union wants vacancies filled
“WE have given them (the union) whatever they demanded, including promotions. I can’t understand why they are continuing their agitation.” He then added, “We are meeting the union representatives again this week. I hope we will be able to end the agitation then.”
The union’s main grouse is against outsourcing of work that have so far been done by employees. The work in question is a contract to Infosys to process e-filed returns at the Central Processing Centre, Bangalore.
Ravi Nair, secretary of the union representing employees other than officers, railed against this. “It is not right. I-T employees have been doing the processing work so far. We are not against the Central Processing Centre . But our officers and employees should be doing the work at the centre , not outsiders.”
Infosys is mostly employing college students to do the processing, Mr Nair alleged, claiming that this was resulting in mistakes. “The processing is not properly done. Over 80% of the work they had done had to be redone by our own employees. Therefore, what’s the benefit the department derives from outsourcing?”
Giving an example of errors committed at the Central Processing Centre , he said, the chief commissioner, income-tax , Bangalore, ML Agarwal, who was to be refunded 60,000, was instead served a demand notice for the same amount. Mr Agarwal was more forgiving. “Such mistakes can happen when large number of returns are processed.”
An spokeswoman for Infosys said she would not be able to comment. Only the tax department could respond on the quality of Infy’s work and the merits of outsourcing. Another major demand of the Union is to fill up vacancies. A union official said there are about 27,000 vacancies.
It is a fact that there are certain mistakes such as ‘Loss from house propery income is not taken into account’,’Depreciation in certain cases is left out’, ‘gross receipts is taken instead of net income’ ‘Credit for TDS is not given’ etc., These are to be corrected and for that matter one can not say that these are not to be outsourced. Whether these are done by college students? I think this is a joke! Does it mean that so far they have not committed any mistake. Can any official of the Department give pending refunds ‘assessment year war’ from 2009-10 to atleast five years backwards i.e. upto 2005-06? There is no secret. Everybody knows that there are lot of pending cases due to various reasons better known to them only. The only way to speed up assessment procedures is to hand over them to the IT (not income tax)experts like “INFOSYS” with proper guidelines.
It is nothing but crocodile tears. Can the unions claim that they have not committed mistakes at all? There are umpteen number of instances where the department employess and officers have committed blunders. Even when pointed out, such blunders have not been rectified for years together. Every time the assessee is granted refund, some old non existent demand gets adjusted against such refund, in spite of so many representations that the demand was erraneous and all the details are made available to the department on record. They cannot claim that Infosys is employing college students for completion of assessment. What happened when the department itself employed outsiders a few years ago to complete the assessments, without taking into consideration the taxes paid by the assessees, resulting in huge non- existent demands? Where were these unions, when PAN cards were issued dime a dozen by giving the job to outsiders by the department itself? Then the H’ble finance minister himself asserted that there were lot of duplicate cards issued and the department wasted so much stationery and money by sending unwarrated letters, as if the assesees were at fault. First of all let them set their house in order. Can they give authenticated statistics of the percentage of error vis-a-vis the number of assessments completed this year? Can they substantiate their work in the past years regarding the number of assessments completed in such a short time? Can they prove that with their long experience in the department as full fledged employees, how many blunders committed by them stand unresolved for years together? Ask the practising CAs, Advocates and ITPs and others concerned. They will shed blood in their eyes. Any project will have intial hiccups and the unions are trying to magnify things just for their presence in the lime light.