MUMBAI, Dec 29: The much-publised queues at the 60-odd VDIS counters in Income Tax offices in Mumbai are not the only queues one identifies with the scheme. Other queues are visible at the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, (ITAT), Mumbai, where eager assesses are trying to meet the deadline, having recently discovered how the scheme benefits them.Waking up to the windfall situation created by the VDIS '97, several assesses are now coming to the ITAT, seeking expeditious hearing of their appeals to enable them to make disclosures under the amnesty scheme.
About a 100 such assesses already have come forward to seek an early hearing of their cases before the tribunal, to meet the deadline of December 31, officials said.
The ITAT is the second forum of appeal, when the assessee comes against the order of the Commissioner, Appeals. (The first forum of appeal is the Commissioner, Appeals who hears the plea of the assessee against the assessing officer). If the order of the Commissioner (Appeals) is set aside by
the Tribunal, the assessee can come forward and declare undisclosed income under VDIS.
In fact, one major corporate has won an order from the ITAT last week, and is evoking a lot of interest in IT circles, considering that if it were to make a declaration, it would pay only 35 per cent tax, the department's chance to demand a higher tax being then foreclosed.
The Tribunal is directing the assesses coming with such requests to the department, and several assesses are ruing the fact that they have come to the ITAT virtually hours before the scheme closes.
The move has also sparked off a debate in the IT department about the wisdom of allowing assesses to pay lower tax, when the case of the department in many cases obviously strong (from the fact that it had landed in the ITAT). Meanwhile, the Chief Commissioner of Mumbai, V M Muthuramalingam, has informed that those declarants who make it to the VDIS counters on December 31, but fail to get their forms processed for want of time, will be issued tokens,
so that no assessee is disappointed.
With close to 5,000 declarations every day since the last five days, Muthuramalingam is a happy man. He is hardly ruffled by the fact that the IT Employees Federation and IT Gazetted Services Federation have declared a day-long walkout on Tuesday to protest against a ``vicious'' chargesheet given to one of their union leaders. The chief commissioner said that alternative arrangements have been made to ensure smooth functioning of the VDIS counters. The IRS cadre is likely to fill in for the absent employees if the walkout is total.
Arrangements for dinner and transport to staff involved in VDIS collections have been made in Mumbai in the last week. The number of counters on Wednesday (December 31) are likely to be a hundred, and all will be manned till midnight. The rush of declarants which began in the second week of December, had entailed the setting up of about 40 counters under the 18 commissioners entrusted with VDIS declarations. If Mumbai was relatively
untouched by the controversy over bogus declarations of silver articles, and gold jewellery, the transfer of two Commissioners marred the otherwise hectic pace of declarations
Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
