CAs are supporters of revenue authorities: Bandhu
| Date :17-May-2019 |
Business Bureau;
Chartered accountants and revenue authorities work hand in hand to ensure compliance of policies framed by the authorities. Non adversial and non intrusive tax administration attitude of the tax authorities helped assessees to comply with reporting easily, said Sandeep Bandhu, Director of Income Tax, Intelligence & Criminal Investigation, Nagpur. He was speaking as a chief guest at seminar on ‘Critical issues in Statement of Financial Transactions (SFT), organised by the Nagpur Branch of WIRC of ICAI. He lauded the contribution of chartered accountants who are the key support agencies to revenue authorities. Sandeep Bandhu, a proactive officer of 1995 batch of IRS, B.Tech. from IIT Delhi, guided the members present about the ‘Statutory Framework of SFT’. He shared the basic intent of legislature with respect to the concerned provisions governing the reporting of statement of financial transactions. “While there is a paradigm shift to bring our tax administration in tune with global trends; the Department has moved from an enforcement agency to a facilitator (tax serving agency),” he said.
Bandhu said, with change in organisational structure, set administration procedure and mindset needs to be changed. With aim of Department directed towards business process re-engineering like e-assessment and expected achievements, Bandhu pointed out that high quality citizen service leads to improved revenue collection. “In the current scenario, assessees data is getting compiled from many sources like Office of Registrar of Immovable Properties, TDS returns of deductors, concerned banks and financial institutions, GST returns of the assesses,” he said. “The third party mechanism is used to cross check transactions between different taxpayers.
Income-Tax Department is working towards principal of once only information extraction to reduce burden on tax savvy citizens and reduce risk of errors due to multiple information systems,” Bandhu noted. He explained the importance of PAN in management of high value transactions. “Even the persons not having Income-Tax PAN, are planned to be effectively traced by resorting to acknowledgement of Form 61,” he shared. Bandhu also explained in detail the provisions concerning filing of statement of financial transactions. He appealed the chartered accountants to help create awareness among assessees to comply with the provisions and the deadline to file the SFT returns being May 31 for reporting transactions of financial year 2018-19. Dr Kaumudi Patil, Joint Director of Income Tax in Settlement Commission, Mumbai who was also the speaker on the occasion guided the members present with the technical and practical aspects, concerning the provisions of SFT.
She started her deliberation with the quote of none other than N. R. Narayanmurthy--Engineering or technology is all about using the power of science to make life better for people, to reduce cost, to improve comfort, to improve productivity, etc. Similarly, the CA professionals are effectively educating the taxpayers on one hand and ensuring due compliance and transparency in the matter of financial transactions, on the other hand, she remarked. Dr Kaumudi Patil, previously posted at National Academy of Direct Taxes and as Joint Director (I&CI), Nagpur, very effectively deliberated with respect to the provisions of registration for SFT.
She also shared her rich knowledge in the subject by duly discussing the requirements to report under various clauses about SFT. She appealed the members present to help assesses to identify the transactions to be reported in SFT i.e cash receipt exceeding Rs 2 lakh by a person for sale of goods or rendering of services to be compulsorily reported by persons liable for audit u/s 44AB of the Income-Tax Act, by May 31, she remarked. CA Suren Duragkar, Chairman of the Nagpur Branch of ICAI lauded the approach of Director of Income Tax (I & CI) Sandeep Bandhu, who had came along with all I-T Department officers to address issues of chartered accountants. He assured the revenue authorities that chartered accountants are working shoulder to shoulder with Department to ensure effective compliance of the SFT provisions.