Honest officers and conducive atmosphere
WE received this mail -
"The other day, TIOL in a news item Revenue Secretary for enabling environment for honest officers to work without fear mentioned the following - "Revenue Secretary Sumit Bose while concurring with the need for use of technology for improved systems, reduced human interface and transparency also highlighted the need for creating an enabling environment where honest administrators can work without fear and are duly rewarded. He stressed that the bonafide mistakes should be distinguished from the malafide mistakes and genuine decision makers must be encouraged and protected, while guilty should be quickly punished."
I may point out almost all the officers in the Central Excise department are honest to the core - they are honest in the service of the department and would never ever let go of any opportunity to prevent an assessee from ‘withdrawing any money' from the coffers of the exchequer.
Ours is a registered STPI unit having an annual turnover of approximately Rs. 150 Crores and we export 100% of our services. In view of the Government mantra that "taxes should not be exported", we are entitled for refund of the Input Service Tax borne by us and which tax credit is in the range of a few crores in a year.
The "honest" officer in our jurisdiction while processing our refund claim issued a SCN alleging that there was no nexus between the services which were claimed as Input Service and the activity performed by us. We were also asked to ‘submit the following documents'/clarify so that the claim could be processed (read rejected) -
1. Service Tax Registration Certificate (incidentally, we are registered as service provider with the same division) to ascertain the status of our unit whether we are registered or not?
2. Copy of STPI registration to ascertain whether we are an STPI or not;
3. Certificate to prove that we are a 100% EOU;
4. Establish tax paid nature of services;
5. Softex Forms;
6. Whether having Centralised Registration or not?
7. Copy of License for "private Bonded warehouse" issued by Customs;
8. Detailed write-up of the exported services needs to be provided to ascertain the nature of services exported;
9. Correlation of each input service with the exported services with detailed write up of the input and output services;
10. Copies of Tax payment challans and ST-3 of the service providers to prove that the tax has been paid to Government;
11. FIRC cannot be accepted as a proof that the services have been exported;
12. Nexus of Renting of premises, manpower services, recruitment services, telephone, internet, IT services, renting of tangible goods (computers etc), testing, security, advertising, courier, AMC of office equipment's etc. with activity undertaken.
I agree that such "honest officers" do work fearlessly and the atmosphere is already conducive for them."