This aims to curb harassment of taxpayers by ensuring transparency and accountability
Barely two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement that taxmen who harass honest taxpayers will be punished, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has taken yet another step to ensure greater transparency and accountability in tax administration.
The CBDT has decided to attach a Documentation Identification Number (DIN) to each of its communication from October 1 this year, be it a notice, order, summon, letter or any other correspondence. Any communication without a computer generated DIN would be treated as invalid and shall be deemed to have never been issued. All such communications would be verifiable on the e-filing portal.
CBDT said that there have been some instances where it was not possible to maintain the audit trail of the communication issued manually. Now from the stipulated timeline of October 1 onwards, no communication would be issued manually without DIN except only if it is in the specified exceptional circumstances. But in such exceptional circumstances, which are specified in today's circular, while issuing any manual communication it would be required to specify reason of issuing a communication without DIN along with the date of obtaining written approval of the Chief Commissioner/ Director General of Income Tax in a particular format.
Any communication which is not in conformity of with the prescribed guidelines shall be treated as invalid and non est in law.
CBDT has also specified that any communication issued manually under exceptional circumstances would have to be uploaded and regularised on the system portal within 15 days of its issuance.
Further, in all pending assessment proceedings, where notices were issued manually, prior to issuance of the present circular, all such cases would be identified and notices so sent would be uploaded on Income Tax Business Application by October 31, 2019.
CBDT's move comes after TV Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global Education and couple of other industry captains has been quite vocal about tax terrorism since the past several years. Taking a serious note of an outcry against harassment by tax officers, Modi in his interview to an english daily said, ''It is a fact that some black sheep in the tax administration may have misused their powers and harassed taxpayers, either by targeting honest assesses or by taking excessive action for minor or procedural violations. We have recently taken the bold step of compulsorily retiring a significant number of tax officials, and we will not tolerate this type of behaviour." He further added that he had asked revenue secretary to come up with measures to ensure that honest taxpayers are not harassed and those who commit minor or procedural violations are not subjected to disproportionate or excessive action.
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