STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: Chief Commissioner Income Tax, Amritsar, Jahanzeb Akhtar on Wednesday held an interactive outreach meeting with stakeholders including the office bearers and members of Chamber of Commerce and Industry Jammu, Chambers of Traders Federation (CTF), J&K, Institute of Chartered Accountants, Income Tax Bar Association and other leading taxpayers of Jammu.
Baljeet Kaur,Commissioner of Income Tax, I/C Range Jammu, Himanshu, Joint Commissioner of Income Tax (Hqrs) Amritsar, Rahul Padha, Joint Commissioner of Income Tax, I/c Circle Jammu and Romesh Kumar Sharma, ITO, Jammu were also present in the meeting. At the onset, Akhtar appreciated the role of business community and tax consultants in the nation building process. Primary purpose of the meeting was to have a firsthand knowledge about the problems being faced by the tax payers and tax professionals in Income Tax related matters and detailed discussions were made in this regard during the meeting. During the meeting, the tax professionals applauded the Income Tax department for the robust web portal and the quick processing of returns & issue of refunds within a couple of days in majority of cases. The CAs highlighted the issue of creation of infructuous tax demands due to the system related errors.
The participants also flagged the issue of non-availability of TDS credits from the Army and Para-Military force units due to non/faulty filing of online TDS returns and who have since then moved out of J&K and thus leading to frivolous demand due to mismatch of TDS. CA Vinay Jamwal also raised the issue of TDS being done by many govt. departments on the gross value of contract including GST instead of the net taxable value excluding GST. Issue of high pitched ex parte assessments primarily due to non receipt/non response to online notices was also discussed. Akhtar assured that all these issues will be highlighted and taken up by her at the appropriate level and will be taken to the logical end. Akhtar constituted a local grievance redressal mechanism involving collection of the grievances from all the stakeholders, category wise compilation thereof and forwarding the same to CCIT, Amritsar for taking up the issues with the concerned authorities for expeditious redressal as well as for making requisite changes in the systemic business rules and processes so as to eradicate the root cause of grievances.
CA Nakul Saraf, President of J&K branch of NIRC of ICAI and Rahul Padha, JCIT, I/c Circle Jammu have been nominated as the nodal persons in this regard. Apart from the above technical problems, the president of Chamber of Commerce & Industry Arun Gupta also highlighted the issue of sufferings of the business community of Jammu region and requested CCIT Amritsar to flag the issue of raising the minimum exempt income limit for levy of Income Tax for J&K in the upcoming budget. He also requested the CCIT to press upon the higher authorities to issue instructions to the Government agencies for preferential purchase incentive to the SME units of J&K regions. Accepting the demand, Akhtar committed to visit Jammu every month to have such interactive meetings on monthly basis for reviewing the progress made in grievance redressal which was widely appreciated by the participants. The representative of J&K Bank, the top income taxpayer of Jammu region, also spoke at length and appreciated the proactive coordination between J & K Bank and the IT department in addressing the pending issues. In the end, CCIT Amritsar thanked all the participants who had spared their valuable time from their busy schedules to grace the occasion.
