Income-tax officers look for VDIS success to improve their lot
Saibal Roy Choudhury
New Delhi, Dec 29: The long, surpentine queues at the Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme (VDIS) counters has heightened the year-end festive mood of the finance ministry mandarins. But income-tax officers, who put in long hours in office during the last week-end, are an unhappy lot.Income-tax officers feel that the success of VDIS should compel the authorities to put an end to shortages that the department has been suffering for quite some time now. For the taxmen, the last straw has been the shortage of stationery in their offices. ``Assistant tax commissioners have to scrape and scrounge for paper clips, file covers, pens and such office aids,'' said a senior IT officer. A majority of the officers in the department are not corrupt as yet but officers will not buy their stationery requirements from their salaries, they will ask willing assessees to gift them their necessities, the officer added. It seems that officers have to regularly face embarrassments. When officers go for a survey or a search
operation there is no arrangement for providing them with refreshments or meals when search operations stretch for long hours. ``We have to end up taking dinner at the assessee's farm house or in his conference room at his office. This is embarassing but there is no go,'' an IT commissioner remarked under the condition of anonymity. Incredulous as it may sound field staff who go on search operations do not have adequate vehicles for their requirement. Officers often end of using the assessee's vehicle to bring back items confiscated during a seizure. One assessee's vehicles are often used to conclude search operations at other locations. Recoveries worth crores of rupees are pending against business houses and high networth individuals like film stars only because vehicles and support staff in the form of bodyguards are not available. ``Officers are often attacked when they go for search operations but we have no means to give them adequate protection,'' an additional commissioner remarked. For such
operations it is necessary to equip the search staff with mobile phones but officers in the field do not have mobiles. ``Mobiles are given to senior officers, this is like giving a gun to the commissioner of police but not to the constable on the road,'' the officer remarked. Ironically assistant commissioners are not even provided phones in office, four officers share one parallel line. This makes three officers incommunicado when one of them is on line. ``The phone is also used by their support staff which makes the ratio much worse than one is to four,'' an officer remarked. In addition to these constraints there is the problem of an orderly classification of files. Assessees have their files stacked in huge piles from where it is impossible to retrieve cases. Computerisation is moving at a snail's speed with only commissioners having got desktops as of now. Given the mess with the records it is doubtful as to how the department will gear up to inflict greater punitive measures on errant assessees
after the conclusion of VDIS.
Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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