In the case of Vaghijibhai S. Bishnoi vs. Income Tax Officer & 1 (Special Civil Application No. 6726 of 2013 dated 09-07-2013), the Hon’ble Gujarat High Court has examined the issue of processing of return filed electronically and subsequent issue of refund. On examination of the records, it was found that though Form 26AS available on the net clearly reflects the amount of TDS paid, yet while processing the return, the credit of the TDS claimed was not given by the Centralized Processing Centre (CPC). Further even after an application for rectification was preferred pointing out this mistake and requesting for giving credit of TDS, no reply to such communication was received by the assessee. The assessee therefore had filed the above Special Civil Application.
The Hon Court has examined the details provided in the official website of the Income tax Department, which reveals the extension of computerization programme of the Department and their vision in this field and commented on the Centralized Processing Center as under:
“15.1 Thus, computerization of the Income Tax Department when has undergone the exercise of ‘a comprehensive business process reengineering’, it is expected that Department’s wish to herald ‘Tax payers friendly regime’ becomes the reality. A ‘paradigm shift is programmed‘ as tax payers’ population has been growing exponentially, ushering all the imperative changes and modernization of administration.
15.2 If the Centralized Processing Center meant for return processing, accounts, refund, storage of data etc. adds to the difficulties of the Tax payers, due to lack of distribution of work between back office and front office, and that too, after having been pointed out the actual error, a serious relook is expected.”
In view of the observations of Gujarat High Court, CBDT should rise to the occasion and immediately address the difficulties our taxpayers are facing relating to processing of electronically filed returns and issue of refunds.
