Refund is Repugnant to Revenue
SOMETIME back I asked a senior Customs/Central Excise Officer, why the Revenue officers are allergic to granting refunds. He said "at the end of the day, we are revenue officers; our job is to collect tax, not to refund it." When I asked him as to why Income Tax Department is more liberal in granting refunds than the CBEC officers, he said, "perhaps their refund orders are not reviewed by senior officers."
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for an assessee to get a refund from the Customs, Excise and Service Tax Department. Somehow the officers here use all their intelligence to find some reason to deny refunds. They forget that their job is to collect the correct revenue - not a rupee less; not a rupee more. If they have collected a rupee more, they should be as eager to return/refund it as they were at the time of collecting it. The ingenuity of the departmental officers knows no bounds when it comes to rejecting refunds.
It is not as if these rejecters of refunds are champions of revenue or they are serving the cause of revenue. These officers are ultimately responsible for the government ending up with payment of interest for a long period, because some Assistant Commissioner wanted to show that he was more loyal than the king and the refund is granted only after the assessee successfully completes a tortuous voyage through the treacherous and uncertain waters of taxation and sometimes the process has to be repeated as the following case will show.