Directorate of Taxpayer Services
THE CBEC is planning to set up a Directorate of Taxpayer Services. The Central Board of Excise & Customs (CBEC) is celebrating the Year 2015 as the Year of Taxpayer Services in recognition of the need to have 'customer focus' in their day-to-day functioning. The Tax Administration Reforms Commission (TARC) has devoted a full Chapter to 'Customer Focus' in its first Report.
Based on the recommendation of TARC, the CBEC has decided to set up a Directorate of Taxpayer Services. How do you start this process? For this purpose, a Committee has been set up to work out the modalities including the mandate, organizational structure and the responsibilities of the new Directorate.
The Director General Inspection has asked for suggestions from the Chief Commissioners on this latest move of the Board.
Will one more babu solve the problems of the assessees? Nothing needs more change than the attitude of the officers and if you can change that, you don't need any directorate for taxpayers, which will anyway be an additional burden on the taxpayer. If the board can instil a little sense of responsibility and accountability, that will change the whole scenario.
See how some of the taxpayer services are working in the Department.
Regional Advisory Committee. (RAC): These meetings were meant to sort out the difficulties faced by the assessees and they used to be prestigious and were presided by a senior and powerful officer like Commissioner. Now the meetings are presided over by an absolutely powerless Chief Commissioner with more than half a dozen Commissioners. The assessees are either snubbed or ignored and no problem is solved; sometimes more problems are created and issues are routinely referred to the Board and that seems to be the surest way to kill the issue. Now there are several other Committees on record, but nobody bothers, because nothing comes out.
Help Centres?: Remember them? In May 2005, the Board started ‘help centres' with a lot of hungama and publicity. Every Commissionerate started a help centre each and all of them folded up within a few weeks. Some even died before their birth. A Commissioner who had not started the help centre yet was furious with me for asking him the address of his help centre. The previous version of the help centres was the tax payers assistance cells. Commissioners were required to send monthly reports on the functioning of help centres - perhaps they still send them!
Indirect Taxes Ombudsmen: Do they still have them? This is a post retirement job for senior officers of the department, but even these posts remain vacant and nobody dares to go to an ombudsman to get his problems solved.
Audit - Extortionist? Audit which was once advisory has now become agencies of extortion and tax terror.
Time for Adjudication: CBEC field officers are to adjudicate cases within one year of notice (where possible) - do they ever do it?
Approval of SCNs by CC: There was a short period when Show Cause Notices had to be approved by Chief Commissioners. This was meant to filter frivolous show cause notices, but nothing of the sort happened.
Committee of Commissioners and Chief Commissioners: These Committees were formed to enhance the quality of review of adjudication orders, but they successfully frustrated the scheme and made it a Committee of Superintendents who don't even see each other.
VCES- the ultimate undercover operation?: The Government invited assessees to voluntarily declare and pay the Service Tax due with a promise to waive interest and penalty. The babus used this solemn promise of the Government as an opportunity to collect intelligence. They collected the data on the assessees and issued Show Cause Notices to hundreds of declarants, just before the time period of one year ended. Now many vulnerable assessees are cursing the day they decided to bite the Government's bait. Next time nobody will believe your amnesty schemes.
Anything that you contemplate for ease of paying tax, will be complicated and frustrated by your officers in the field, who are all brilliant men and women. The most crooked assessee has to bow before that brilliance.
The greatest taxpayer service you can do is to teach your staff that they are not soldiers hired to fight the assessees; that they get their salaries only from the taxpayers and that the taxpayer is really your boss. Maybe they can start with NACEN.
CBEC DG, Inspection Letter F.No.503/56/2015, Dated: March 20, 2015