Advance Ruling - a nightmare for taxpayers?

The author is right in stating that the rulings by AAR are perverse. Instead of free and fair justice, by way of holistic interpretations, the advance authorities are resorting to arbitrary and fanciful orders, without appreciation of facts and law, and with little application of mind. They appear to be concerned to protect revenue and their positions. This leads to unproductive litigation, which the GST laws intended to curb. This is mainly due to irrational approach by the decision makers. There is nothing new in this, when we compare the success rate of such decisions in tribunal, in respect of service tax, vat and excise cases.

This is high time we set right the advance authority systems as well as the adjudication mechanisms. Having departmental officers to act as proper officers has proved to be costlier, unproductive and waste of labour to all stakeholders / litigants. Further this results in creation of huge volumes of litigation which cannot be resolved by higher forums at a later date. This can be understood, when we see the time taken for a issue to reach its finality. This makes the good and simple tax to be a nightmare. It is better that proper systems are initiated immediately to switch over to a productive justifiable mode as opined by the author. The powers of the departmental executives to make decisions in such situations should be taken away and to be entrusted to independent and learned community, so that an effective advance and adjudication system will be in place instead of present, known abberrated system. The GST council should take up deliberations on this count early and relive the tax system of it's anti-justice approach.

M G Kodandaram
Assistant Director ( retired)
NACIN.

madihally kodandaram 20/08/2018