The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) has devised new strategy to dispose of over 11,000 income tax appeals, involving Rs 39 billion, pending with the Income Tax Appellate Tribunals (ITATs) and other appellate fora.
Official sources told Business Recorder here on Thursday that a daylong Commissioners of Income Tax (Appeals) conference held in CBR developed consensus on a uniform strategy for the liquidation of pending appeals. However, the CBR expressed serious concern over the poor performance of the Legal Wing, which virtually failed to expedite the appeal process.
Under the new strategy, Chairman CBR Abdullah Yusuf directed RCITs to identify cases where the department has filed frivolous appeals with the Income Tax Appellate Tribunals. The department would immediately review all such appeals for early withdrawal.
The CBR has also decided to transfer appeals from one Income Tax Zone to another in cases where large number of appeals are pending with one zone. Moreover, more appeal zones would be created to speedup the process.
All CIT, Appeals submitted the break-up of pending appeals, amount of tax involved, number of fresh appeals filed during July-June 2003-2004 and their jurisdiction.
It will be worth mentioning that the CBR has decided to withdraw all cases where decision on two appeals at different stages has been given against the department.