The Bar Council of India (BCI) wants chartered accountants and auditors banned from advising on income tax matters of values below Rs 60 lakh, therefore leaving the domain exclusively to advocates, reported the New Indian Express.
The regulator has sent a communication dated 11 September to the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) in Delhi and the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) in Bangalore to delete clauses in Section 288(2) of the Income Tax Act 1995 that allow persons other than advocates from advising on tax matters, if the value of the matter is below Rs 60 lakh.
The BCI was acting on the report of its members S Prabakaran and Rameshchandra G Shah, which was considered at its 28 July meeting.
According to the report:
“Originally, under sec 44AB of IT Act, persons carrying on business having turn over exceeding Rs 60 lakh per year have to submit Tax Audit Report in Form 3CD duly signed only by CAs. The Act was redefined, and sec 44AD added to it in April, 2011, which included all business class assessees having a turn over `60 lakh and below within the ambit of tax audit. In view of the redefined clause, assessees approaching the CAs can declare less income and pay less tax. If they approach a legal professional, they have to declare fixed percentage of income and pay more tax, because of no authority to attach such Tax Audit Report. Then, nobody will approach the legal professionals and they will be indirectly threatened to extinction from income tax practice. This will amount to virtual withdrawal of the right conferred on legal professionals under Sec 288(2)(iii) of IT Act.”
Comments
The idea behind s. 288 was to allow persons with technical knowledge and not just legal knowledge to present tax cases on behalf of clients. That people continue to choose CAs to present cases on law than tax lawyers shows competence and quality of tax lawyers in India.
This effort to create an artificial monopoly in favour of a handful of lawyers in select cities would be highly unjust and unfair to clients.
Lawyers, after all, have been around for a few centuries more than these self-deifying munshis and I certainly credit us with more maturity than to react in haste!
Lage raho, CAs... may your 'reach' (and thereby the need for our services) ever increase!!
Dear Dual qualified Lawyer CA , I too agree with youy stating that the BCI and ICAi must work things out and also ensure that Tax is a compulsory subject in the law curriculum unlike the present where it is optional and does not have any good professors so as to keep lawyers updated on tax
The BCI representation patently shows that lawyers are not abreast of tax since [b]the tax audit limits are Rs 1 cr ( for business) and Rs 25 lakh for profession u/s 44AB of ITA and NOT Rs 60 lakh[/b] as mentioned
They must also allow dual qualified professionals to practice both professions , subject to continuing professional education criteria (CPE)prescribed for practicing CAs set up by ICAI being satisfied by such dual qualified professionals like us where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole