FM wants CBEC Chief Commissioners to be facilitators and achieve Revenue Targets
LET me reproduce here what I reported yesterday on the FM's speech at the conference of Chief Commissioners (to be held) yesterday.
It is a routine practice for the Finance Ministers to exhort the Chief Commissioners to meet the Revenue targets; to be facilitators and not enforcers; to make procedures simple.
This is exactly what the FM asked the Chief Commissioners. Even the Revenue Secretary asked the Chief Commissioners to play a facilitating and non-adversarial role. Every measure of facilitation has resulted in adversarial action causing immense misery to the trade which is facilitating the huge revenue collections of the Department.
The facilitation of 30% interest imposed on delayed payment of Service Tax will kill the service providers. The Chairperson of CBEC Shanti Sundharam said that the newly introduced provisions for pre-deposit would expedite the dispute resolution process. Certainly yes, because many small assessees who are handed out ridiculous adjudication orders will not have the money to pay the 7.5% or 10% or 17.5% or whatever pre deposit you want on every silly order you make. It is nearly a week since the Finance Bill has been enacted and you have not yet clarified whether your officers will be prevented from recovering the demand, interest and penalty when the appeal is pending. Maybe you want the Supreme Court to clarify that after twenty years of litigation! You ask your facilitating Assistant Commissioners how fast they are in denying genuine refunds on unfair reasons. After the budget, several doubts were raised and not a single one has been clarified so far. Some facilitation this!