The Survey - Some Findings
KEY Concerns in the Previous Survey:
- Taxpayers treated like tax-evaders
- Revenue biased approach
- Lack of clarity on tax issues
- Significant delay in grant of refund claims and rejection of refund claim on trivial grounds
- Unwarranted litigation
- Persistent delay in responding to queries / concerns of taxpayers
- Need for continuous follow-up for any response or action
- Lack of customer service approach
- Huge burden of manual / physical documentation
- Intermittent transfer of officers without proper handover / takeover arrangements
- Lack of transparency and undue expectations by field formations
- Introduce fair and transparent quasi-judicial adjudication process
- Create environment for officers to take independent decisions
- Expedite dispute resolution
- Clarify stand of revenue on contentious issues upfront
- Timely finalisation of provisionally assessed bills of entries and processing of refund claims
- SAD refund - Requirement of filing original sales invoices should be withdrawn / relaxed
- Easy process of cancellation of bonds / undertaking etc. submitted at the time of import
- Remove requirement for producing original purchase invoice at the time of de-bonding of assets
- Consequential refund arising out of favourable appellate orders should be suo-moto processed
- Broad base CENVAT credit mechanism and allow credit for all input services
Some Suggestions in the 2016 Survey:
• Change in overall approach of CBEC is not visible at the lower level staff
• Discontinue the practice to visit business premises for collecting information
• Automatic escalation of pending/overdue matters to Commissioner/Chief Commissioner
• Authorities should be made accountable for delay in responding to taxpayers' requests
• Expedite transfer of files in case of change in jurisdiction
• Quality of interactions at the field formation level needs to improve
• Periodical training of personnel on behavioral, technical knowledge and technology aspects
• Need to improve infrastructure of tax offices
• Display sensitivity and urgency towards business needs