Days after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley sought to allay the concerns of tax officers over the decisions of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, about 70,000 officials of the Central Board of Excise and Customs registered their protest against the decisions by wearing black bands on January 30, which is Martyrs’ Day.
This came after the Indian Revenue Service Association, along with the service associations of Customs, Central Excise and Service Tax called for a boycott of the International Customs Day celebrations to be held on Friday.
According to them, the GST Council’s decision to give jurisdictional control of 90% of the tax assessees having an annual turnover below ₹1.5 crore to the States would lead to depletion of the taxpayer base with the Centre.
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In its statement, the revenue service association pointed out several operational problems with the way the GST had been structured across the Centre and the States, and also took issue with the administrative appointments made to the GST support structure.
“The officers of this department are under oath and are sworn by the constitution to safeguard the interest and the sovereignty of the country and are fully aware of their obligations towards the constitution and service to the people of the country,” the Indian Revenue Service Association said in a statement.
“However, in the present set of things and decisions, which has been taken in the recent meeting of the GST Council, it is felt that the basic structure of the scheme is being compromised and the same may lead to utmost chaos which may be detrimental not only to the revenue but also to the industry, trade and commerce in general,” the statement added.
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The IRS Association also raised several operational issues to do with the implementation of GST, such as to whom the Comptroller and Auditor General will submit its audit report—the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) or the State PAC—or whether the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Central Vigilance Commission would have jurisdiction over the states.
The Association also pointed out problems with the appointments made to the administrative posts in the GST Secretariat.
“The IRS officials also feel that The GST Council, in the present form, has representatives from all the State Governments as well as Central Government through the FM,” the statement said. “However, the post of Secretary to the GST Secretariat, as well as Additional Secretary are IAS officers. The CBEC Chairman, the lone domain specialist, is merely an invitee.”
“Thus a situation has been created wherein the officials having thorough domain knowledge have been sidelined in favour of generalists having their own agenda,” the statement added.
During his speech on Friday, Mr Jaitley had said: “The kind of disquiet in the service… should itself reduce as there is no real occasion for fear or this kind of sense of insecurity for anyone in the service. That opportunities that are available to people in service as a matter of policy, as a matter of constitutional guarantee, are all protected, except that the nature of activity will itself have to change.”