VCES - Harassment?

By Vijay Kumar

A Chartered Accountant sent us this mail:

I am a practising chartered accountant in xxxx,

This past week, some of my clients & myself, who are regular service tax payers and filers of all periodic returns have received communication from the jurisdictional Commissionerate - informing us that our names appear in their stop filers / non filers list and informing us to take the benefit of the VCES scheme.

My past experience tells me that in order to give a proper reply, I will be required to collect all the necessary data from clients about copies of past returns & challans etc- to show / establish that we are neither stop filers nor non filers.

Even with all this compliance, there is no guarantee that our names will be removed from the list.

In fact I am now expecting more such letters from the department to some more of my clients who of course are regular in compliance of these legal requirements.

Can you please suggest me a proper course of action to avoid occurrence of these incidences in future?

VCES is a facility, not a penalty!