So, last week I completed my second year in “the Chamber” and received order for Transfer of office.
For those who are less informed about career of Indian Revenue Service officers
working in the Income Tax department, there is change in local transfers every
year decided by the Local Placement Committee which finalizes postings in a
cadre region for Assistant and Deputy Commissioner’s grade who have different
nomenclatures but nature of work remains same.
I assumed charge of Circle 1 (Exemptions), Kolkata on 6th
June 2016 after my transfer from Circle 26, Kolkata having office in South
Kolkata. The best thing was that the office was situated in Middleton Row which
is just in the heart of ark Street which is dotted with series of eateries and
restaurants like famous Peter Cat, BBQ, Mocambo and bakeries Flurrys, Au Bon
Pain (difficult for me to pronounce). My chamber overlooked Vidyasagar Setu
far-off on Hooghly and skyline dotted by high-rises amongst which “THE 42”
stands apart.
As for work, I was pretty clueless as any new IRS (barring
few KTP’s), reason being the entities which were assessed there were not
required to pay any tax i.e. they were “Exempted” from paying tax. Sounds
simple!! Even I had same preconceived notion that it is one of the easiest
tenure and that I will be reading lot of Hindi literature, writing blog and
travelling, but these thoughts vanished once I was briefed by my predecessor on
the nature of work and seeing “charge memo” running into pages.
Basically, NGO’s/NPI’s/Trusts and other charitable
organizations can be divided into those who are genuinely doing charity and
those who have legal existence as “charitable body” though they are not doing
any charity on their own. They have to be dealt within section 11, 12 and 13 of
the Income Tax Act. Though maximum work was limited to these 3 sections but
amount of legal tangles and litigation and multiple interpretations they
generated was enough to frighten any infant of the dept. The non-genuine
activities (read loop holes) of few is not a fact which anyone is unaware of
but something which successive governments tried to stop but yielded limited
success and Ministry of Home Affairs or CAG for that matter does not seem to
put an effective strategy to tackle them as they are “non-governmental bodies”
so issue of jurisdiction always comes into play. Few months back MHA decided to
cancel the FCRA license of thousands of NGO’s which were receiving funds from abroad but no complying with the legal provisions like filing of FCRA
return of ITR. One of the main issue why they could not have been tackled or
funds to been tracked for end use is
that the moment someone starts enquiry there is lot of hue and cry on flimsy
grounds by them. Secondly, they are in lakhs in numbers so to enquire them is
like gargantuan task which has to be done manually and by persons whose
integrity is “beyond doubtful”. This term refers to honesty and is near to
another term called “Dead Honest” 😉 which I will discuss sometime later. So
whenever there will be “discretion” with the government official it will always
be a “double-edged sword” as human mind is tend to exchange favour which has
crude linkage to our societal set-up. Sometimes, it is also observed that even
though someone has good intention and is doing good work but lands up on the
wrong side of law or compliance due to ignorance or unorganized nature and it
is here where discretion which public official is entrusted with can be used
for helping the desired and deserving ones.
Not going much on genuine-non-genuine NGO’s what I was
astonished to find was that schools and hospitals have become more of a
“commercial entity” and there is no trace of “charity” left in them. Some of
them have become epitome of give and take syndrome which even big corporate
fail to implement in the manner as crass as they can. However, in this lot also
comes relief when you see work of Ram Krishna Mission, Bharat Sevashram Sangh
and Missionaries of Charity along with sectoral NGO’s like CINI, few Govt.
Establishments. The insight into working also gives you a satisfaction when you
catch hold of some scrupulous NGO’s and fix them in the a manner that they can
find difficult to escape even after spending big bucks on high profile lawyers.
My work is forcing me to not discuss the individual cases but yes, its very
tough and time taking process to prove that someone is not “charitable”. For me,
it has been an excellent opportunity to meet people whom you have genuine
respect like head sister Prema of Missionaries of Charity, Archbishop of
Diocese of Calcutta, Saints from R.K. Mission, Yogada Satsang Society and
various social workers who are contributing their part for betterment of
society. As an Assessing Officer i.e. A.O. (officer who assess the case of
particular PAN) I had to visit Tata Medical Centre which is an state of art
cancer hospital in Kolkata for inspection where it was delightful to see the
non-human interventionist approach of the group along with paper-less system as
personally I have seen most of the times patients/attendants used to search and
keep tracking medical papers and diagnostic reports. Its both patient and
environment friendly. Also, many-a-times the outreach program gave opportunity
to attend seminars and one such has been organized in the St. Xaviers college,
Park street where students were just mind blowing and there appeared one more
dilemma regarding what to speak and where to divert the query itself :P as the
answer to that may be contrary to the government policy and there comes into play
“reasonable restrictions” on FoE of Public servants.
Another thing for which this year will be remembered will be
happy times spent throughout the year with Nayan sir and Batchie Amit and Jitu.
The walks through Park Streets for evening tea in road side stall in कुल्हड़ (earthen pot for tea),
shared lunches, long discussions on trivial issues and the most elating weekend
cricket matches which has seen long cricketing season from Goa to Dimapur and
not to miss the Edens experience will be high points. One of most unpredictable
part in your happy office life is your bosses and subordinates i.e. hierarchy
above you and below you, and for that I was lucky through the second year too
on both the fronts.
Referring specifically to the Income Tax matter, this year
too I must say by experience that the frequent adjournments by the parties or their
representatives cause major delay and consumes lots of productive time by
delaying the proceedings. An officer is caught between time-barring proceedings
i.e. they have to be completed within fixed time, right of the party to get
fair opportunity and ensuring fairness in investigation and following due
procedure of law as he/she is also a “Quasi-judicial” authority and proceedings
and powers are in the nature of a civil court. Contrary to the popular
perception that government offices have fixed time of working ie from 10 to 6
or like that, my office (including me) had to work sometimes till 8 P.M. and
open on weekends too for doing the work entrusted to us. This year was also
landmark year for entire Income Tax Dept. as back to back ambitious scheme were
announced to get hold of black money and were closely associated with PM’s priority
to clean up the ills of Black money and parallel economy. Income Disclosure
Scheme 2016 IDS was announced and was operational till September 2016 and yielded
65K+ crs even in limited period and having higher tax rate of 45%. The hard
work and dedication of all the wings of the department was an example of
cohesive working and probably a case study where officers across all ranks
worked for it without any extra incentive or staff and all the regular routine
work was also carried on. Then arrived the “D”-day i.e. 8th November
2016 when Demonetization was announced. I will not deliberate on merits and
demerits here because it’s a long debatable issue, my limited point here is
that till 31st December 2016 and which is also continuing till now,
the officers esp. in Investigation Directorate could not sleep for nights and
may have made their offices as temporary stay as cash deposit of old demo. Currency
was happening and real-time data transmitted to the dept. to catch hold of
errant entities, shell companies etc. lastly the advent of PM Garib Kalyan Yojana as another opportunity
for people to come clean which kept us on toes till March 2017. Sometimes there
is dilemma as whether we are Enforcement dept where results are yielded by
Intrusive action like surveys, raids or a Service-oriented org. for sake of
peace of mind, I don’t think much on it and believe that it should be
situational.
Now, as I step in new chamber with responsibilities of
Administration and Vigilance at Headquarters office of Pr. Chief Commissioner
of West Bengal and Sikkim, the challenge is huge, legacy is strong and hence
sight has to be visionary to do justice to the CHAIR.
Third year beckons…
टेन टेणन...
