AIFTP for scrapping of tax tribunal

All India Federation of Tax Practitioner's (AIFTP), the apex body for tax professionals, has made a fresh representation to finance minister P Chidambaram for scrapping the national tax tribunal in totality. Currently the fate of National Tax Tribunal is pending before the Supreme Court.

Commenting on this fresh onslaught against this tribunal, K Shivram, national president of AIFTP said that "The key objective of the NTT as proposed by the previous government was to improve tax collections but in reality the NTT is going to be a complete drain, with a total outflow Rs 30 crore pa, in addition to the huge capital expenses required office and residential accommodation. The real solution lies in to have a permanent tax bench in the High Courts where substantial tax appeals are pending for disposals or a National Tax Court."

The previous government had argued that revenue collections would be improved is untrue as 95 per cent of total revenue is collected by way of advance taxes and TDS.

In addition to assessment, the collection is not more than 5 per cent. Also of the total 17,000 appeals pending before the tribunal, 60 per cent belong to the government departments.

Hence, the view of setting up the NTT will increase the possibility of recovery is without any basis, AIFTP has argued.

"The High Courts and Supreme Courts are the pillar of justice in India. By setting up a separate body up it would mean taking the powers from the High Court and giving to the tribunal would be unfair to the common man as it will end up shaking the confidence of tax payers. Also from a legal standpoint, if the government decides to go ahead, it wont be able to take the powers from the High Courts under Article 266/277 of the Constitution and give it to NTT. "

AIFTP has proposed that instead of making this huge expenditure that would end up duplicating work, the government can establish a research academy on direct taxes.