Customs in 1961 provided better delivery of service than now

Requirement to achieve the target gives officers unlimited power

At first glance, seeing the heading, the present generation may think that I am joking. They cannot compare the two situations. There are not many alive now who can. It is not easy to compare also. It is like comparing Rod Laver with Roger Federer. Situations are vastly different. Trade has increased many fold. Computers have come.

My proposition is that even with computers, the delivery system is slower and torturous to the importers compared to what it was in the good old days.

So let me first define what I mean by delivery of service to importers. Fundamentally, it means the time taken for clearance of imported goods which is called "dwell time". And the next comes, refund, drawback, appeal, litigation, realisation of arrears dues of customs and finally corruption. The whole interaction of an importer with customs is an issue.

The main criterion is clearance of goods. Earlier, the customs tariff was brief, items being in numbers like 1,2,3 etc.

Like resins fell in 15 A. Machinery was item 72. Sub-headings were few. So classification was simple.

There was a Pink Book giving all rulings of Board for tariff. So we used to see the tariff and the Pink Book. Now, the tariff is like a heavy five-kilo giant of a thing having exemptions in thousands. Then, all exemptions were under the relevant chapters. So seeing a tariff was very simple. Now you cannot find an exemption because they are in a separate place with so many Lists and so many conditions.

Licensing was much easier, as it was a simple one volume Red Book which has now been replaced by voluminous input output charts in heavy volumes which are not easy to correlate. Now, there are more items under OGL but the export schemes , very large in number, have made licensing more complicated.

Drawback was taking time in those days, but now it is easier due to computer. This is the only item where things have improved. But refund has become a distant desire.

Earlier, refund used to be given as soon as assistant collector refund, or Appellate Collector or Revisionary Authority passed the order. No questions asked.

Now, there is the awful menace of the theory of unjust enrichment which has made refund well neigh impossible.The system of review and Tribunal have taken the Department to such an extent of legal rigmarole that no favourable order for an assessee goes unchallenged. It has become a pattern to pass an adverse order or to go to appeal against all favourable orders. There are 75,000 cases pending in the Tribunals. Similar number must be pending in Courts and Supreme Court. And it is known from the reply to a Parliament Question that nearly 85 per cent of all cases in Tribunal and Courts are lost by Revenue. So in that many cases, tax payers face harassment now. It has become a lawyers' paradise .

Earlier in the sixties, or seventies there were revenue estimates, but no target. The officers were not given silver medals and cups for reaching a target. Now, the requirement to reach the target gives the officers unlimited power for coercion which is well known as "tax terrorism".

The relation between the department and the tax payers has become adversarial. There is too much pressure on the tax officers to maximise revenue collections leading to arbitrary adjustments / additions, denial / delay in sanction of refunds / drawback, disputes and unwarranted litigation. Assessment orders passed by the tax officers reflect the revenue biased approach. Too much emphasis on revenue is forcing the tax officers to adopt coercive arm twisting methods to squeeze revenue by holding out threats of arrest and prosecution.

In short ,the customs department that existed in the 1960s was simple and more efficient due to simple tariffs, less complicated licenses, clear rulings by CBEC, no court cases, no review, no big paraphernalia of appeals in every case, no revenue target and no adversarial attitude.

Now, the tariff is utterly user-unfriendly, officers always pass adverse orders creating an era of unconscionable level of needless disputes that impose high costs on industry. Computers do not give any relief if the circumstances are so unfriendly to the assesses. Only, drawback has improved and nothing else.

Smukher2000@yahoo.com