No end to harassment of Taxpayers

It seems that there is no end of harassment for taxpayer even though there are lot of assurance provided by Prime Minister to improve the process.

Given below, are a few instances, where the law must be amended to stipulate time limits for action by the Income-tax authorities

(i) As per law, there is no time limit fixed for the tax department to resolve rectification applications filed. Further, the tax department rejects these applications in case the applicant does not actively follow up this rectification application every six months.  There are instances, where these applications are pending more than a decade.    

(ii) The tax payer has the option to go for an appeal when he is not in agreement with the order passed by tax department. Even though for disposal of appeal, time limit has been prescribed as per law, the appellate forum does not follow the same and again the appeal is kept pending for a long time and the appellant keep waiting for justice

(iii) The Tax officer on receipt of the order passed by the appellate level is suomoto required to pass the  order giving  effect (OGE)to the order passed by appellate authority. However, law does not provide any such time limit and again the tax payer even after getting the appellate order, is required to wait indefinitely for justice .

(iv)    The law does not provide any time limit when the tax payer will get  their refund cheque once an OGE has been passed. (RTI – time taken to get refunds from date of OGE). Taxpayers in the country don’t know when they are likely to receive their tax refund cheque. Further, at present, the tax officer keeps raising tax demands for later years and keeps adjusting the tax refund of previous years.  In this way, the whole matter is made complicated and the taxpayer loses confidence in his ability to extract the tax refund. 

One should from RTI find out average and median time taken by tax department to dispose of the taxpayer application of Appeal, rectification and refund. 

If the Government really wants to improve the ease of doing business, they need to find a way to increase transparency and disclosures relating to the income tax department.