Poor coordination hurting taxes

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: The government has been losing most of the cases related to revenue due to a lack of coordination between tax offices and the government attorney, according to deputy attorney general Raj Narayan Pathak.

It is the greedy nature of some tax officers that has also forced the government to be backdated about decisions related to tax assessments, he said during

a training programme organised by Inland Revenue Department (IRD).

“It has been found that some tax officers assess tax compliance only to receive more incentives from the government,” said Pathak.

“In most cases, IRD and Inland Revenue Offices (IRO) file cases without proper consultation with government attorneys,” he lamented. “But, tax administrators blame the government attorneys when they lose the cases.”

A Supreme Court judge Baidhya Nath Upadhyay indicated the poor performance of employees at the tax administration for the massive leakages in revenue.

“Even a direct supervision by the staff of Inland Revenue Office has not improved the overall collection trend of excise duty,” he said, questioning the existing provision of deploying an employee from IRO for alcohol manufacturing companies.

Isn’t it shameful that entrepreneurs can evade excise duty even though the tax administration has introduced the provision of placing employees at the premises of factories to inspect their tax compliance, remarked Upadhyay.

However, officials from the judiciary accepted that there is low exposure of judges regarding cases related to revenue. “Revenue related cases are an entirely technical issue,” said Pathak. “But, the government has not provided any capacity building training to government attorneys.”

“On one hand, government attorneys have to face work pressure and on the other they are not updated about tax issues and most of them are not aware about tax related issues,” he said.

Coordination between government attorneys and the tax administration is a must to ensure effectiveness in tax related cases, Pathak claimed.

The IRD, of late, has been alarmed since it is losing most of the cases at the Revenue Tribunal and even in the courts. “The department should seriously take up this issue of losing cases to control revenue leakage,” an official at the department said.