Giving effect to Appellate orders of ITAT. - Income Tax - 1038/CBDT

INSTRUCTION NO. 1038/CBDT Dated: November 3, 1983 The main object of Instruction No. 1000 dated 17-8-76 is to ensure that the appellate orders of the ITAT are given effect to promptly by the ITO. The procedure was streamlined for effective check by the respective Commissioners of Income-tax on the follow up-actions by the ITOs. After perusal of detailed replies of some of the Commissioners, it appears that normally the Assistant Registrar of ITAT office sends copies of the Tribunal's order direct to the ITOs by ordinary posts and not to the Commissioner of Income-tax, concerned, however, in some charges, the local ITAT office is sending such copies of the orders in batch to the Commissioner of Income-tax's office either as a matter of practice or at the request of the concerned Commissioner of Income-tax. Further the Commissioner of Income-tax, West Bengal, has informed that as per the practice in West Bengal charges, for the last several years in the matter of examination and processing of Tribunal's orders, the work is handled by the CIT's Judicial Branch manned by two Assistant Commissioners. As soon as batches of Tribunal's orders are received, these Assistant Commissioners in charge scrutinise them and put up their suggestions before the respective Commissioners for accepting or contesting the orders by filing reference applications, and no scrutiny reports from the ITOs through the IACs are called for. 2. Having regard to these circumstances, the Board have now evolved the following revised procedure: (i) In each Commissioner's office, a register should be maintained to record the receipt of the Tribunal's orders. This register should be in two parts - one part for appeals filled by assessees and the second part for appeals filed by the Department. The register should be in the proforma given in annexure I, Columns 1 to 7 of the register should be filled up in the office of the Commissioner on receipt of the Tribunal orders. (ii) Thereafter a list of the orders in the same proforma as given in Annexure I will be forwarded after filling up columns 1 to 7 to the ITOs along with a covering letter in the form given in Annexure II. A copy of such letter will be endorsed to the IAC concerned. Wherever the copies of the orders meant for the ITOs are received in the CIT's office, the Tribunal's order should be sent to the ITOs through the IAC under a covering letter in the form earlier given in Annexure II along with a list of the orders in the proforma as given in Annexure I. (iii). The ITO, on receipt of the orders will take action to implement the Tribunal orders. If the order results in raising demand, a notice of demand alongwith challan will be issued. If the order necessitates the issue of refund voucher, instead of challan the refund voucher will be issued. If refund has to be withheld under section 241, report will be submitted to the Commissioner of Income-tax, seeking his approval. If the refund has to be adjusted against the demand for any other year, this will be done. Thereafter, column No.8 of the proforma will be filled up and returned to the ITO (Judl). The Annexure should be returned within 15 days of the receipt of the letter by the ITO. The ITO will send scrutiny reports, if such reports are required to be submitted well within the limitation time. (iv) On receipt of this proforma the ITO (Judl) will get the necessary entries made in column 8 of the register. He will periodically go through the register and take action: a) to obtain reports, if reports are delayed; b) to write to the ITOs to get the demand notice/refund voucher, as the case may be served if it is found that this has not been done in any case. (v) If it is reported that a particular file has been transferred to another ITO, the ITO (Judl) will obtain the information regarding giving effect to the appellate order from the ITO to whom the file has been transferred. (vi) The Commissioner should periodically go through the register and satisfy himself that the ITO (Judl) is carrying out his part of work. A report should be submitted to the Board by the Commissioner of Income-tax every quarter giving particulars of the cases where demand notices/refund vouchers were not served in respect of orders passed during the earlier quarter. This report should be submitted by the end of each quarter in respect of the orders passed in the previous quarter.