Prajjwal Kaushik
Lately, just like me, you also must have seen a news about Bangalore based Chartered Accountant being arrested for fraudulent Income Tax Refunds.
Soon enough, it was all over the internet and social media on a mass scale.
A section of media has also been pointing out and portraying the CA community in a bad light.
Being a Chartered Accountant, this has been rather disturbing as they have taken the fact that multiple CA offices were raided, and incriminating evidence were found. Such news though baseless has raked up and projected the fraternity in a manner which is questionable.
Let’s discuss what happened in detail:
Background of the issue:
A press release was issued by the Director General of Income Tax (Investigation) - Karnataka & Goa, wherein fraudulent income tax refund scam busted in Bangalore- a case of tax professional abetting tax evasion.
Search and seizure operations in the case of Shri NageshShastry of SSK Associates Bangalore were conducted and was found that he claimed bogus losses under the head income from House Property for his clients.
Nearly 1,000 such returns were filed, with loss claim aggregating to around ₹18 crores. The employees work in over 50 companies in Bengaluru, including reputed ones such as IBM, Vodafone, SAP Labs, Biocon, Infosys, ICICI Bank, Cisco, and Thomson Reuters, the note said.
The employees said the CA had told them he could get them refund by making some claims. Out of the refund, he also took 10% as incidental charges. Some WhatsApp messages between the employees and the CA were also shown by them as supporting evidence.
What’s wrong isBrandishing CA Community with a bad image:
Personally, the profession being media trialed is a sad state of affairs for the illustrious profession, which is in fact governed by rather stringent code of ethics and peer reviews.
This has been rather disturbing as they have taken the fact that multiple CA offices were raided, and incriminating evidence were found.
Such news though baseless has raked up and projected the fraternity in a manner which is questionable.
“A censure has to be person wise rather than brandishing a community on singular terms.” – says KSCAA in a representation to the Income Tax Department to clarify the situation to general public.
On the top of this all, the very fact that the notorious consultant falsely pretended to be a CA to lure clients and provide professional services in such capacity, came up in the interaction with DGIT (Inv.), Bengaluru as had with the Chairperson and office bearers of ICAI Bangalore Branch.
In other words, he wasn’t a CA at all.
This is not for the first time, something like this has happened but as Chartered Accountants we are taught professional skepticism and professional judgement while practicing the profession.
That is what we need when it comes to brandishing our profession.
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