Online weekly report to Central Excise
Have you paid over One Crore Rupees as excise duty in PLA last year? If so you are in trouble. The Central Excise department has announced its special love for you. They want to know your welfare and progress on a weekly basis. And the system is already in place. You have to submit your first return by 3rd of June. Trade Notices have been issued by Commissionerates detailing the procedure and the lofty aims behind this exercise is stated to be to take prompt remedial action for the problems faced by the assessees and soon the trade notice turns authoritarian and states that major assessees SHALL submit online information on production, clearance, exports, revenue liability etc on a weekly basis. Why can’t there be a request instead of ‘shall’ and why submit? Is the assessee always expected to be submissive? Long ago there used to be a mistaken notion that the bureaucrat is a civil servant. Today he is neither civil nor a servant.
The weekly e-return is required to be filed online to the department’s website by the 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th of the month. They are also required to fill a web form. The assessee will use the user id and password provided by the department.
Under what law is the assessee required to do all this? Don’t ask such silly questions, if you do all it takes is a notification to amend the rules and if you are adamant they will amend the rules retrospectively with effect from 1944 and make non filing of this return a cognizable offence! The moot question however is, What is the department going to do with all this information?
Source: TRADE NOTICE NO. Dated: 27.06.2005 of Chennai I Commissionerate.