Delhi High Court - Orders
Intertek India Private Limited vs Assistant Commissioner Of Income Tax on 26 November, 2021
Author: Manmohan
Bench: Manmohan, Navin Chawla
$~A-12
* IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI
+ W.P.(C) 6361/2021 & CM APPL. 21994/2021
INTERTEK INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED ..... Petitioner
Through: Mr.Kamal Sawhney, Advocate with
Mr.Divyansh Singh, Advocate.
versus
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER OF INCOME TAX ..... Respondent
Through: Mr.Kunal Sharma, Advocate with
Ms.Zehra Khan and Mr.Shubhendru
Bhattacharyya, Advocates.
CORAM:
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE MANMOHAN
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE NAVIN CHAWLA
ORDER
% 26.11.2021 In the present case, refund amount stands paid to the petitioner. However, as the issue of lack of coordination between the Assessing Officer and CPC was arising in a number of matters, this Court had directed the Chairman, CBDT to put in place an appropriate standard operating procedure.
In response to the said direction, the Commissioner of Tax (Judicial), Delhi, has placed on record a Report dated 27th October, 2021. The relevant portion of the said Report is reproduced hereinbelow:-
".......7.5 For most of the scenarios, functionalities are already present in the software - which is an integrated platform made up of ITBA, CPC Bengaluru, CPC-TDS, e- Filing etc. Therefore, the refunds in most of the scenarios can Signature Not Verified Digitally Signed By:KRISHNA BHOJ Signing Date:29.11.2021 17:45:32 be issued through system. However, for some rare scenarios that cannot be handled through software system, ITBA Assessment Instruction No. 11 dated 18.06.2019 also provides that refund can be issued by the Assessing Officer by manual cheque with the approval of Chief Commissioner of Income Tax concerned.
7.6 The system applications mirror these Notifications, Circulars or User Manuals and are continuously evolving depending on the changes in Law or needs of the taxpayers/Department.
8.heading......
8.1 While the set of Guidelines, Instructions, Circulars or Notifications cover most scenarios that any taxpayer or Officer may encounter, there may be situations where the systems may not work as anticipated or a situation which may require change.
8.2 In cases where any difficulty arises in working on system, there are dedicated Helpdesks manned by the concerned Service Providers supervised by ITD personnel. The field officers have login access on the Helpdesk systems to raise Tickets on various issues. For ITBA and CPC related issues, tickets are raised on ITBA Helpdesk, which also transfers them to CPC team in case the issue pertains to CPC. In large number of cases, the issues get resolved by the Helpdesk. The Helpdesk also has various internal levels of escalations for complicated issues.
8.3 In rare cases where issues are of such complications that they are not resolved by Helpdesk, the field officers also escalate the same by emails to the office of DGIT (Systems) or concerned verticals of the Systems Directorate, such as CPC, ITBA etc. The officers in the verticals then coordinate with the technical teams, i.e., service providers, to get the issues resolved expeditiously.
8.4 The Department has taken note of the challenge that with rapid pace of computerization in every sphere of work of Signature Not Verified Digitally Signed By:KRISHNA BHOJ Signing Date:29.11.2021 17:45:32 Direct Taxes, the number of system-related issues being faced is naturally likely to increase, especially, in the present transition period. However, as functionalities stabilize and changes are put in place for which work is ongoing, the difficulties will reduce.
9. Therefore, while the existing SOPs for working on system and for coordination and feedback between Assessing officers and CPC/Systems Directorate ensure consistent and systematic work throughout the Department in most cases, further strengthening of existing mechanisms and additional SOP is being undertaken by the Department, in pursuance of the Hon'ble Court's directives......."
In view of the assurance given hereinabove, the present writ petition is closed.
MANMOHAN, J NAVIN CHAWLA, J NOVEMBER 26, 2021 TS Signature Not Verified Digitally Signed By:KRISHNA BHOJ Signing Date:29.11.2021 17:45:32