Reduce Litigation, pay refunds, be fair - Revenue fairy tale?
IN the recently held conference of CBEC Chief Commissioners, the lofty goals discussed include:
1. Finalise pending investigations and adjudications
2. All RUDs to the notices, should be supplied timely along with giving three opportunities for personal hearing for expeditious disposal of pendency.
3. Adjudicating authorities should pass fair orders, and officers passing orders that do not meet the legal scrutiny should be suitably advised.
4. Board's guidelines on prosecution were not being followed. (any instance of any guidelines being followed?)
5. Timelines have been fixed for all circulars and instructions to be reviewed and topic-wise indexation by 31.12.2015.
6. Drawback is required to be sanctioned within three working days while CEx and ST registration is to be granted in two working days.
7. The emphasis of Government is on “Ease of Doing Business” and in that context the Board and field formations have to focus on reduction in time, cost and documents associated with procedures / requirements stipulated under various Rules and Regulations.
Focus Areas:
Customs:
1. Reduction in dwell time of cargo release - suggested measures in this regard are simplifying and automating amendment procedures of import /Export General Manifest, Bill of entry / Shipping bill, exploring the feasibility of combining payment along with filing of Bill of entry (including introduction of PLA type arrangement, encouraging filing of advance / prior Bills of entry, encouraging Direct Port delivery and expanding the scope of pre-arrival processing by tweaking “entry inward” procedure in ICES.
2. Elimination of paper documents wherever there is robust and reliable electronic handshake through message exchange and/or wherever digital signatures are introduced. Exploring the feasibility of digitization of all supporting documents and printing of Bills of entry and Shipping bills in summarized form.
3. Review of Rules and Regulations from the perspective simplification and reduction in time, cost and documentation requirements.
4. Review ACP and AEO schemes for enhancing trade facilitation.
5. Use website to explain procedures in lucid manner and develop and publish standard operating procedures associated with Customs clearance and other departmental functions. Address frequent downtime, interruptions and slowness in systems.
6. Implementation of Single Window which would include an integrated Customs declaration, automated routing of consignments to the other government agencies for clearance, an integrated risk assessment that takes into account selectivity criteria of other government agencies. The project envisages a paperless clearance process.
Central Excise and Service Tax:
1. e-payment and automated sanction of Rebate for Manufacturers (if they file ARE1 online and file shipping bills with digital signature).
2. e-payment of Refunds.
3. Review of Rules and Regulations from the perspective of simplification and reduction in time, cost and documentation requirements. Develop standard operating procedures and simplification of existing procedures related to end-use notifications.
4. Simplification of Refund procedure in Service Tax - Automated computation of refund amount in Service Tax and explore the possibility of immediate sanction on the basis of accreditation and subjecting them to annual audit.
Vision CBEC
CBEC is envisaged as an organization of global standards, which is fair and transparent and technology driven, encourages voluntary compliance, ensures efficient collection of taxes and administers border control. The group also focused on certain areas of immediate concern such as Dispute resolution, technology, Human Resources issues and Attitudes and Motivation.
Take-away of the conference
(i) Withdrawal of cases pending in SC/HC/CESTAT where SC decision on an identical matter has been received and accepted;
(ii) Data regarding cases pending in CESTAT where duty involvement is Rs 10 lakh or less, or where appeal has been filed only for enhancement of penalty to be furnished to the Ministry in 30 days for examination of withdrawal of all such cases in keeping with the National Litigation Policy;
(iii) Reasonable time bound disposal of adjudication - views of all formations sought in 30 days time;
(iv) 12 crore legal fees said to be pending across the country: review to be done by all formations and steps taken for expeditious settlement.
Until next conference, have a nice time.
Not a Single Commissionerate Inspected.
The conference was told that in this financial year, no Commissionerate has been inspected till date by the Chief Commissioners.
Inspection, over the years, has been converted into an annual farce and now they have stopped doing that also. The officers are so busy that they have no time to inspect or be inspected.