The Central Board Direct Taxes (CBDT) has issued a clarification that cases pending before the Dispute Resolution Panel will be covered under the Vivad se Vishwas Scheme.
After the introduction of ‘Vivad se Vishwas’ in Lok Sabha, several queries were received by the Government from stakeholders seeking clarifications in respect of various provisions contained in it. The Government had considered these queries and decided to clarify the same in the form of answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs).
One of the questions addressed in these queries were, “Are cases pending before DRP covered? What if the assessee has not .filed objections with DRP and the AO has not yet passed the final order?”
CBDT has answered affirmatively to the question where they have clarified that “a person who has filed his objections before the DRP under section 144C of the Act and the DRP has not issued any direction on or before the specified date as well as a person in whose case the DRP has issued directions but the AO has not passed the final assessment order on or before the specified date, is eligible under Vivad se Vishwas.”
It is further clarified that there could be a situation where the AO has passed a draft assessment order before the specified date. Assessee decides not to file an objection with the DRP and is waiting for the final order to be passed by the AO against which he can file an appeal with Commissioner(Appeals). In this situation even if the final assessment order is not passed on or before the specified date, the assessee would be considered as the appellant and would be eligible to settle his dispute under Vivad se Vishwas. Disputed tax in such cases would be computed based on the draft order. In the declaration form, the appellant in this situation should indicate that time to file an objection with DRP has not expired.
