News
Delay in appointing permanent tax chief paralyses IRD, affects revenue collection and other key functions
View(s):The continued delay in appointing a permanent Commissioner General (CG) has become a huge obstacle for the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) to achieve its tax revenue targets, officials have warned the government.
The IRD has functioned under an acting Commissioner General for the past one and a half months since the retirement of D.R.S. Hapuarachchi on August 27.
IRD officials say that this has paralysed much of the department’s functions, given that a permanent CG is required by law to carry out certain duties in terms of the law. Only a permanent CG can give directives to collect tax arrears, suspend bank accounts, open new tax files, seize property of tax defaulters, and compile tax assessment reports.
The Inland Revenue Staff Officers’ Association has already sounded the alarm over the crisis. It has written to the President’s Office, highlighting the urgent need to appoint a permanent CG. It has pointed out that, in terms of Sections 97 and 98 of the Inland Revenue Act, none of the above directives can be given by an acting CG as he is not afforded any power by the Act.
Some tax defaulters who had action taken against them over the past one and a half months have already used this reasoning to file legal action against the IRD, while others have appealed to the Tax Appeals Commission, officials say.
The government’s tax revenue target for the IRD this year is Rs. 1,667 billion. The department is still Rs. 466 billion short of this target with only two months to go. The Inland Revenue Staff Officers’ Association Secretary, J.T. Chandana, told the Sunday Times that the delay in appointing a permanent CG was causing enormous damage to the IRD in addition to the department falling behind its tax revenue target.
| Death threats to IRD officers in Negombo The Inland Revenue Service Union (IRSU) has written to the Presidential Secretariat, sounding alarm over alleged death threats made to officers from the Inland Revenue Department’s Negombo office during an attempt to recover tax arrears. According to sources, the IRD’s Negombo office had taken action to obtain a court order to freeze bank accounts belonging to a Negombo-based company that had defaulted on tax payments amounting to billions of rupees. Following the action, a company gang allegedly stormed the IRD’s Negombo office during office hours on October 5 and threatened the regional IRD Commissioner. He has lodged a complaint with the Negombo Police following the incident. In its letter to the President’s office, the IRSU noted that IRD officers were acting on direct instructions from the Treasury to take action to achieve tax revenue targets. The officers have become targets after taking action to implement the law, and their safety and their lives are now under threat. As such, the union has requested that the President’s Office take action to order the Police Chief to initiate a special investigation into the incident and bring the culprits to book. Failure to prevent IRD officers from being subjected to death threats will have an adverse impact on the state’s whole tax collection mechanism, the union has warned. | |
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