Helpless in dealing with tax deductors defaulting in depositing TDS

The government is working towards fixing the problems of delay in tax refunds being faced by many taxpayers which turn into grievances, a top Income Tax Department official said at an ASSOCHAM event.
If you have excess collected or if there is based upon appeal effect or for whatever reason refund is due which you have not got for long time, we are trying to resolve these problems, said the Chief Commissioner of Income Tax-TDS, Ms Nutan Sharma while inaugurating a national seminar on 'Tax Deduction At Source (TDS) organised by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM).

The functionality is now available with TDS Assessing Officers and very soon it will be operational and some issues regarding fate of the old cases and others we have taken up with CBDT (Central Board of Direct Taxes) and very soon we are trying to resolve all those things so that there is no problem in getting the returns to you, said Ms Sharma.

She also said that the government is helpless in dealing with tax deductors who default in depositing TDS.

Many times the tax deductors, after deducting TDS from specified payments, deliberately do not deposit the taxes so deducted in government account, we have tried our best and despite applying various measures we have failed, this gives rise to a large number of grievances from public, said Ms Sharma.

Deductors have been prosecuted despite that they are not paying into the government's account and there we are kind of helpless as to what has to be done in those cases, she added.

Talking about the problems at the income tax authorities' end, the Chief Income Tax Commissioner-TDS said, Verification or spot verification in cases of top deductors and defaulters and other such problems can be resolved through most of the measures taken by the department just to enforce the TDS and by making the department's environment more congenial and tax friendly.

She also rued about lack of time due to which the department is not able to achieve targets and improve our budget collections. It consumes a lot of our precious time in answering to courts for genuine things, we ourselves want that compounding should be done as quickly as possible and prosecution should be launched in as less number of cases as possible.

Our aim is not to prosecute anyone, our aim is just compliance of TDS, said Ms Sharma. We want to educate people so that no such situation arises where we are forced to take any kind of coercive measure as it wastes a lot of time, creates tension and causes hindrance in creating a non-adversarial tax environment.

She also called for greater industry-government interaction.

Talking about the TDS performance in Delhi, Ms Sharma said that TDS was not doing very well due to economic slump last year. In November 2014 restructuring of income tax department took place and our overall growth at Delhi and National level was less than 7 per cent.

With our great efforts and co-operation from industry we ended up with a growth rate of 13.65 per cent in Delhi which is very creditworthy as Delhi got the singular distinction of achieving and exceeding its budget and TDS was instrumental in this regard, further said the Chief Income Tax Commissioner-TDS.

Amid others who addressed the ASSOCHAM seminar included Mr Ravi Agarwal, Commissioner of Income Tax (CPC-TDS) and Mr S.P. Singh co-chairman, ASSOCHAM National Council in Direct Taxes.