Just a year after the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) raised the threshold monetary limit for the income-tax department for filing appeals in higher judicial forums, the Board on Thursday raised the limit again ‘as a step towards further management of litigation’.
The threshold now stands at Rs 50 lakh for appeals before the appellate tribunal in income-tax matter. Similarly, it has been raised to Rs 1 crore for High Court and Rs 2 crore for Supreme Court. Last year, the Board had raised the monetary limit for appeal in tribunal to Rs 20 lakh from Rs 10 lakh earlier. The threshold was more than doubled in case of appeal before High Courts to Rs 50 lakh from Rs 20 lakh earlier. For appeal before the apex court, the limit had been raised four-fold to Rs 1 crore.
The Board hasn’t provided information on reduction of cases due to higher threshold. After the last year’s increase, it has said that the income-tax department would withdraw 34% of cases stuck in tribunal, 48% of those stuck in High Courts and 54% in the Supreme Court.
The department has struggled to attain any significant progress in concluding disputes to recover tax demands. According to budget documents, over Rs 6 lakh crore was stuck in litigation at the end of FY 18. The recent CAG report said: “The arrears of demand increased from Rs 10.4 lakh crore in FY 2016-17 to Rs 11.1 lakh crore in FY 2017-18. The Department indicated that more than 98.2% of uncollected demand would be difficult to recover.
