‘CBDT will soon come out with scheme on Budget proposal to dispose small appeals’

New Delhi: The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) will soon come out with a scheme on the Budget announcement of reducing pendency of appeals related to TDS default issues, board chairperson Nitin Gupta said.

In her Budget speech on Wednesday, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said she proposes to deploy about 100 joint commissioners of the Income Tax department for disposal of small appeals and to reduce the pendency of appeals at the commissioner level.

“We will come up with a scheme, the appeals dealt here will be mainly relating to TDS (tax deducted at source) default, the orders on TDS default, the orders on the processing of return of income where we feel that it requires adjustment and the taxpayer feels otherwise...there could be cases of small income (under dispute),” Gupta said. The scheme will aim to expedite the process of disposal of appeals by the first appellate authority, which is the Joint Commissioner for Appeals, he said.

Under the Income Tax scheme, an order issued by the tax authority can be challenged by the taxpayer first before an officer holding the charge of Commissioner (Appeals) followed by appeals to the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), the High Courts and the Supreme Court.The CBDT chief said the board will “divert” manpower from its present cadre to man the 100 posts of joint commissioner for this purpose.

Talking about another Budget proposal of the taxman being “more selective in taking up cases for scrutiny of returns already received this year”, Gupta said this was doable because of the increased use of technology tools by the tax department and introduction of measures such as the e-verification and ITR-U.The intent behind this proposal, announced by the finance minister, is that “we are now better equipped in terms of technology to identify cases which have more potential”, he said.Technology is enabling the department to look at the mismatches — in returns filed by the taxpayer and data available with the tax authority — and deepen and widen the tax base, Gupta said. He said about 10 lakh updated returns (ITR-U) have been filed by taxpayers till now.

“We are of the view that we can pick better cases for scrutiny... selection of cases can be more incisive and more specific and mismatch can be taken care through the route of e-verification. This will help to reduce litigation too,” the CBDT chief said. According to officials, the tax department currently picks a very “miniscule” number of cases, post filing of the returns, for limited or full scrutiny where an assessee is supposed to provide a number of documents, proofs and explanations to satisfy queries.