Finance Ministry trashes CBDT-CBIC merger rumour, calls it 'factually incorrect'

The government on Monday denied a news report of merger between Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC). The report is "factually incorrect" as there is no such proposal to merge the direct and indirect tax bodies, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement.

"It has been published without due verification of facts from the competent authorities of Ministry of Finance and only creates a policy distraction when the Ministry is amidst implementation of a large number of taxpayers' friendly reforms like transition from manual assessment based on territorial jurisdiction to a completely randomised electronic faceless assessment, electronic verification or transactions and faceless appeals," the Finance Ministry added.

It further said that the merger was earlier recommended in a report of the Tax Administrative Reforms Commission (TARC), but was not accepted.

"The report of TARC was examined in detail by the Government and this recommendation of TARC was not accepted by the Government. As a part of an assurance made by the Government in the Parliament in response to a Parliament question, the Government has also placed this fact in 2018 before the Committee on Government Assurances. The action taken report on the recommendations of the TARC is placed even on the website of the Department of Revenue, which clearly shows that this recommendation was not accepted," it noted.

Earlier there was a news report claiming that the government is planning the merger of CBDT and CBIC, tax bodies pertaining to direct and indirect taxes, respectively. The report had also suggested that the government is mulling a merger so as to contain the costs of operations amid increasing revenue loss.

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