Anjana Singh & Parul Shah – [2024] 165 taxmann.com 187 (Article)
The Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs Mrs. Nirmala Sitharaman in her Budget speech emphasized that it has been a consistent endeavor of the government to simplify taxation, improve taxpayer services and reduce litigation.
Impressing upon the intent of the government, the Finance Minister cited that litigation and appeals will continue to receive highest attention.
The Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax (NFAC) in its reply to a RTI application has disclosed statistics of appeals pending before the first appellate authority CIT(A) as of 1 January 2024. It is startling to note that a staggering 3,61,748 appeals are pending before first appellate authority. The Finance Minister acknowledged that the pendency of litigation at various levels has been on the rise due to larger number of cases going for appeal than the number of disposals and also indicated that they will allocate more officers to dispose off the appeals.
Working towards Pursuing its its objective to reduce the pendency of litigation, the Vivad se Vishwas Scheme, 2024 (‘VSV 2024’) has been introduced.
VSV 2024 is proposed to be rolled out considering the success of the earlier scheme Vivaad Se Vishwas Act, 2020, launched for appeals pending as on 31 January 2020. The scheme got encouraging response from taxpayers and also resulted in gathering substantial revenue for the government.
The main purpose of the scheme is to –
- Reduce pending litigation
- Generate revenues for the government
- Get relief from pending dispute by paying disputed tax and getting waiver from payment of interest and penalty and also getting immunity from prosecution.
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