Tell us your rate
A peek into a few of the existing bribe rates in the Commercial Tax department of Karnataka
ipaidabribe.com ascertained the rates for various favours in the adjudication and appeals system of the Commercial Tax department. These are some of the interesting insights that we got (See Box):
| Favour granted | Bribe rate |
| Staying of the proceedings and order that 50 % of the deposit of the payment is in cash and 50 % could be through furnishing bank guarantee: | Rs 15,000 and upward |
| Ordering of refunds | 5 to 10 % of the total value of the refund |
| Getting the legal cell to say that the case is not a fit case to be taken up by the department in appeal | 5% of the total value of the refund |
If you remember Sukhdev from the first post, who spilled the beans on corruption in the Commercial Tax department of Karnataka, and inspired us to start the series, he was not open about discussing corruption in the Appellate Tribunal. All he said then was that once the case goes in favour of the assessee in the Appellate Tribunal, the legal cell gets to decide whether the case needs to go to the High Court. However, he was all praise for the Commissioner of the Commercial Tax department, an honest officer who has done plenty of work in curbing corruption.
In an innovative step, the Commissioner assigned an equal number of cases to senior Additional Commissioners, who were to take the decision whether or not to take these to the High Court. The consequence of this step was that all the frivolous cases got dropped without any corruption. The fact that the HC also began to take a hard line on frivolous cases, castigating the department for not studying cases well before going in appeal and dismissed cases with costs, began to have an effect on reducing harassment of assessees through unnecessary court action.