Year in the Chamber: The Exempted second one.

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 6^th 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. 8^th 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 31^st 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…

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