Indian Revenue Services (IRS), which got a bad name in the last few years due to the harassment of taxpayers by corrupt officers, is not happy with the Modi government’s “faceless assessment” policy.
The scheme, which was launched by the government in October last year, has given relief to taxpayers and ended all the avenues of corruption by IRS officers. The power of IRS officers has also diminished as they have no person to person contact with taxpayers and the cases are allotted randomly to any officer in the country.
Last year when the scheme was being implemented, representatives of the Income Tax Employees Federation and the Income Tax Gazetted Officers’ Association (union of IRS officers) wrote a letter to CBDT and opposed the implementation of the scheme. “We express our strong displeasure on this type of unilateral decision-making as it is not in the interest of the efficient working of the Department,” wrote the representatives of the union in the letter.
The ‘faceless taxation’ scheme might not be in the interest of IRS officers but it helps the common taxpayers of the country. As per the scheme, if a person receives scrutiny notice, there is no need to visit local tax department officers; just reply on a website and your case will be assessed by an unknown officer. “Faceless income tax is here to help. No need to meet your local income tax officer to explain your income and tax. Reply electronically on the income tax department portal (website),” reads the public message issued by the department at the time of implementation of the scheme.
The scheme sounds fairly reasonable, technologically advanced, and efficient to anyone. But, many IRS officers are unhappy with the scheme as they are now just the cyber police with no power to brag. “For any civil servant, interaction with the public is a huge incentive… If you take that away, a lot of people would not want to join the service at all,” said an officer.
The corrupt officers are especially unhappy as this scheme ends most of the avenues for the corruption and harassment of taxpayers. “The IRS is a technically competent service, with officers who have domain expertise…This move has reduced their job to a cyber policing job with no interaction with the public,” said another officer as per a report by ThePrint.
The government has also significantly reduced the number of IRS officers as most of the job can be done through Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning with the advancement in technology. The officers are not happy with this, too, as they do not have much scope for promotion as technology reduces their job role.
In the latest complaint about the diminishing authority of tax officers, the IRS officers claimed that the government is punishing the whole service for the deed of few officers. “The whole thing has been portrayed as though tax terrorism was a creation of individual IRS officers, and by digitising the whole process and making it faceless, it will be eradicated,” said the officers from Northeast in a letter.
In the letter, the officers asked for parity with IAS officers in promotions and postings, as well as reservation in the jobs of various ministries and departments apart from IRS service. “As the I-T department is rapidly becoming systems-driven through machine-learning and artificial-intelligence driven initiatives, IRS officers also need to chart a trajectory independent of the department. Our officers should be encouraged and facilitated to assume larger roles in governance so that aspirational needs of individual officers are also fulfilled,” said the IRS officers from Northeast in the letter.
Since the last six years, the bureaucrats- especially the corrupt and entrenched ones who do not want to lose the grip on power- had been at loggerheads with the Modi government. Many of these entrenched elites were given compulsory retirement by the government and, overall, the bureaucracy is not happy with the Modi government as it brings fresh talent through the lateral entry and breaks their monopoly on policy-making and administration.