NEW DELHI, Oct 13: Stating that the Government is ready to respond to industry’s queries on black money, a senior finance ministry official, nevertheless, today justified the stringent law legislated by the Centre to fight the menace.
“We owe it to the country to ensure that at least the law is clear and stringent so that the menace could be handled,” said Anita Kapur, chairperson of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) while inaugurating the ASSOCHAM’s 12th International Tax Conference.
She said that Government is willing to issue its response on industry’s concerns or queries raised on procedures to be followed under the new black money law.
“We have been issuing FAQs on compliance window we issued three sets of responses to the queries raised, we are open to issue responses to what you find problematic in the procedures on the black money,” Ms Kapur added.
The 90-day disclosure window offered by the Government for disclosure of black money held in foreign assets ended on September 30, with declaration of total amount of Rs 4,147 crore. She also said that CBDT was trying to address issues on the administration side but advised the industry not to overplay such issues.
“We do not want to recover taxes which we are not entitled to recover, we want taxes which as per our law we have been obligated to recover,” Ms Kapur said.
“Less than one per cent of taxpayers get to see our offices, 99 per cent of taxpayers do not need to come to our offices, we accept their returns, we do a non-human interface processing of cases, we do issue refunds without human intervention,” she added.
Pointing out that there are 3-4 lakh cases in which the tax department has a role, Ms Kapur said, I am also surprised with the noise in the system because everybody talks about these cases and out of these cases 30 per cent do not even travel to the first level appeal and assessment of the assessing officers is accepted.”
She also sought taxpayers’ cooperation to address these issues. Terming the Base Erosion Profit Shifting (BEPS) project as ‘movement in the right direction,’ Ms Kapur said that the industry should look at the intent and not try to clutter up the system with ingenious and imaginative interpretation of what internationally is a movement to lay down clear rules of where the income will be taxed and how the tax rights will be allocated between different jurisdictions. (UNI)
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