Monetary limits for officers to deal with excise, customs

In order to streamline dispute resolution process, the revenue department today fixed monetary limits for officials with regard to central excise and service tax cases.
Under the revised norms for adjudication of show cause notice, an officer of level of Superintendent can deal with cases involving "duty/tax/credit demand for central excise and service tax" up to Rs 10 lakh.
"...Henceforth powers of adjudication both in Central Excise and Service Tax shall be exercised, based on the monetary limit of the duty/tax/credit involved", the CBEC said in a bid to allow greater flexibility in allocation of cases amongst adjudicating authorities.
As per the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), the limit for Deputy/Assistant Commissioner has been fixed at Rs 10-Rs 50 lakh and for Additional/Joint Commissioner it is between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 2 crore.

Cases involving more than Rs 2 crore falls with Commissioner level officers.
CBEC said cases involving taxability, classification, valuation and extended period of limitation would be kept out of the purview of adjudication by Superintendents.
It further said that an immediate exercise should be undertaken by the field formations to, take stock of the present pendency, redistribute them for adjudication and transfer the relevant files and records to respective adjudicating authorities.
"The exercise of transfer of case of records should be completed within a month...And the recast figures should be reflected in the subsequent monthly performance report," it said.