Redeployment of manpower. - Income Tax - 1626/CBDT

INSTRUCTION NO. 1626/CBDT Dated: June 12, 1985 Instruction No.1617 dated 18-5-85 issued vide Board's F.No.201/109/85-ITA II has liberalised the limits of cases liable for assessments in a summary manner. This will make it possible to divert a good number of officers hitherto employed on these cases to other priority areas. A redeployment of officers and staff is essential in these circumstances. The Board have, therefore decided that the existing manpower in each Commissioner's charge should be redeployed in the following manner:- 1. First priority should be given to the search and seizure cases. It has been decided that all search and seizure cases brought forward as on 1-4-85 should be disposed of by 31st December 1985 and current search and seizure cases should be completed within 6 months of the date of search excepting when there is a legal impediment. Each Commissioner of Income-tax will nominate the officers who will be assigned within the cases of his charge. To ensure that the assessments in search and seizure cases are completed within the above period, the CIT should deploy sufficient number of officers to handle these cases. It has also been decided that in officer dealing with search and connected cases will not ordinarily be assigned any other cases. Reference to a search case in these instructions apply to all the searches conducted in relation to one assessee or group of assessees, on the basis of common information. It may be that several premises are covered in such a case, but it will be counted only as one case for purposes of deployment of manpower, though for statistical purposes each warrant is treated as a separate search. It is also clarified that the mere filing of an application before the Settlement commission does not operate as a bar to assessment proceedings and therefore examination of seized material and necessary investigations should be continued and quantification of concealed income proceeded with. The requirements of the strength of the officer to be deployed for this work should be gauged by the CIT's themselves on the basis of the work load after taking into account the volume of seized material extend of investigation required and the cooperation by the assessees. How many such cases an officer can be expected to dispose of in a year will depend upon these factors as well as the competence skill and experience of the officer assigned to process the case and so on. 2. Next in priority should be the scrutiny cases which will include all the cases not covered for assessments in a summary manner u/s.143(1) as per instruction No.1617 and so also cases selected for sample scrutiny on random basis as per instruction No.1619 issued vide F.No.201/145/84-ITA.II dated 3-1-85. Each ITO dealing with such cases is expected to turnout about 200 cases every year. Since the scrutiny in all these cases is expected to be of a very high order culminating both in zero error assessments as well in the direction of concealment and fraud and some of them resulting in prosecution u/s.276 C of the I.T.Act, it must be ensured that the officer deployed on such work are sufficiently senior and experienced. Each of them is expected to give at least 10 good cases of prosecution for concealment. 3.I After meeting the above priorities the available manpower should be deployed on summary cases. Instruction No.1617 dated 18-5-85 has already been issued laying down that all cases, other than company cases, with returned income/loss upto 1 lakh company cases with returned income/loss upto Rs.25,000 and having a paid up capital not exceeding Rs.5 lakhs except new cases and all Trust cases and cases of charitable Institutions having income below Rs.1 lakh and having a corpus not exceeding Rs.5 lakhs except new cases should be completed in a summary manner u/s.143(1) of the I.T. Act, 1961 after linking with the records but without making scrutiny of any sort. 3. II The services of Inspectors should be fully utilised for completion of summary cases. In this connection reference is invited to instruction No.1349 issued vide Boards F No.201/110/80-ITA,II, dated 3-9-80 regarding summary assessments, para 5,6,7,8,9 of the said instruction provided for the deployment of Inspectors for completion of these cases. It was provided that Inspectors should be empowered u/s.125(1)(b) of the Act to do assessment work for which necessary Notification as per proviso to sec.125(1)(b) had been issued by the board on 3-8-80. It was however laid down that this would not apply to the Inspectors working in central circles, company circles and special circles, and the Inspectors would complete only these assessments where the returned/finally assessed income for the assessment year concerned and the two immediately preceeding assessment years was Rs.25.000 or less. They were also not empowered to deal with a return declaring loss. His functions were to include making of assessments u/s.143(1) charging of interest u/s.139(8)/215/217, initiation and disposal of penalty proceedings in cases completed by him as well as rectification u/s.154/155 flowing therefrom and waiver of interest under rule 40 and 117 A but he would not have functions of recovery and collection. It was also laid down that where a summary assessment completed by the Inspector resulted in a refund, the refund voucher would be signed by the ITO. The instructions regarding completion of assessments by the Inspector as provided in the above instruction No.1349 would continue to be in force with the following modifications:- (a) The Inspectors working in company circles would also be vested with the functions of making summary assessments; (b) They would be empowered to complete all the assessments liable for completion u/s.143(1) as per instruction No.1617 irrespective of the amount of income/loss involved. 3. III It is expected that each ITO including his Inspector would give a disposal of about 5000 cases each year. 3.IV The completion of summary cases as above will throw up a sizeable amount of work for the ministerial staff involving the linking up of the returns with the earlier records, checking up arithmetical accuracy of the computation of the total income-taxes and interest etc., the preparation of tax computation sheets, assessment orders, notices of demand and challans, recording in the demand collection Register etc. The achievement of the objects of this scheme will therefore greatly depend upon the deployment of a large number of staff on these cases. In order to maintain smooth flow of files for disposal adequate staff should be provided for managing the records to make sufficient number of files available to Inspectors and ITO's every day. Similarly sufficient staff should be deputed for post assessment work including the preparation of notices etc., and their despatch. Since the requirement of staff in search and seizure and scrutiny cases will not be much it is expected that sufficient staff will be available for redeployment in summary cases. 4. The Board desire that above arrangement should be completed by 30th June, 1985.