While finance minister Arun Jaitley has promised a non-adversarial tax system, the approach of the taxman doesn’t seem to have changed. It is high time the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) took a hard look at the outcomes of the appeals filed by the income tax (I-T) department in the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), high courts and the Supreme Court (SC). The latest data with the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance shows that only 17% of the appeals filed by I-T in the ITAT, and just 19% in the high courts and the SC, were decided in its favour in FY14 .
Though the performance has been better at the SC in FY14 as compared to the previous two financial years, in the high courts and ITAT, it remains unchanged. The CBDT must set up a screening mechanism to evaluate the merit of appealing a case.
