Collection of Information
Many happy returns
The DGST wants a mountain of information to grant a simple registration certificate and this information has to be certified by a host of officers from Inspector to Commissioner. The one crore plus assessees are required to furnish a weekly report on their production, clearance and other related and unrelated activities. In addition to these, the Central Excise department spends most of its time in gathering compiling and submitting reports. The IRS now stands for Indian Reporting Service.
The Kelkar Committee had recommended that
as a policy, no information should normally be asked for (from departmental officers or industry) unless it is being obtained in the prescribed returns from the tax payer. [Chapter 4 : Paragraph 9.2]
The only relation the department has with their assessees is now collection of data; it could be revenue particulars, during the last day, last week, last fortnight, last month, last year and five years; it could be particulars of production and clearances; it could be replies to audit objections or it could be replies to queries from the Board. The field officers spend all their time in answering queries from the top or compiling statistical data. And usually any information asked from the field will finally land up on the lap of the assessee. The reports have a long and arduous journey up and down.
Here is a classic case. Dr. Vijay Kelkar (yes the famous Kelkar) when he was Petroleum Secretary wrote a letter to the Finance Secretary regarding some problems of assessment of LPG gas cleared for domestic consumption. What the learned doctor had suggested to the Finance Secretary was that the field officers should be stopped from going ahead with SCNs and other actions till a decision was taken by the Ministry. The letter was marked by Finance Secretary to Chairman, CBEC. The Chairman marked it to a Member. The member sent it to all the Chief Commissioners for their comments. The CCs duly forwarded to the Commissioners and from there it went to the Divisions and finally to the Ranges. The Range officer gave it to the assessee who was supposed to give his comments which would have again travelled through the same route right up to the Finance Secretary. In this case by the time the letter reached the assessee, Dr. Vijay Kelkar had become the Finance Secretary! And what the assessee received was a photocopy of the Petroleum Secretary’s letter with the markings of all the great officers from Secretary to Superintendent. A senior officer tells me that the combination of computer, Xerox machine and fax is a lethal one to destroy the functioning of our offices. Any office with all the three machines is dangerous to the nation and will only create work for other offices.
The funny part is that most of the information collected is not useful and not used and is hardly reliable. For example the whole of the morning of the sixth day of every month is spent by a Range Inspector in gathering revenue figures from the factories. This is compiled and communicated (often with a little cooking and a lot of spicing) to the Division and from there right till the top. What does any body do with this information? And if this information is really important, why can’t it be made mandatory for all the assessees to furnish this information by 10 am on the sixth day of every month?. Actually the assessee can be asked to feed the information to a system and by 11 am you can have the total revenue for the whole country available to the Finance Minister and every assessee and Inspector in the country. Why can’t we use those computers? This can be done every day also with no hassles.
Or there can be another easy way of knowing the revenue collection. Only PLA payments are taken as revenue. You can ask the banks to give a consolidated report on the amount collected till the fifth day of every month and the Divisions can give a report on the refunds sanctioned and Lo and behold! You have the revenue figures. Is that all that simple? After all we have created so many posts in the name of cadre review and all these newly promoted officers should appear to be doing something!
In many cases the information asked is already available with the authority asking for the information. But since it is easy to ask a subordinate and since facility of computer, Xerox and fax are available, it is always better to ask the lower authorities – not that anybody really has any authority. We have been experimenting with computerisation for the last; last many years; By this time we should have developed a good data base to answer any question. It is not difficult, I know a Deputy Commissioner who had captured all the data required into his system and he never asks his Range staff for any data.
In the US they have a law against collecting information without the sanction of a specified agency and it is really difficult to get that sanction. We too should have something like that. Before we go in that direction, the first step is to withdraw that Xerox and fax machines from all offices. You can see the results.