In the city of Mumbai one can feel the pleasant edge of chilly weather. When the entire north of India is reeling under a cold wave our city at least takes a brief break from the hot and humid afternoons.

Now it has become a ritual to talk about simplification of the tax laws. In the recent past, the Hon'ble Finance Minister has talked a lot about the simplification and introduced a form to file to returns which is allegedly a comprehensive one. He also wants to place the simplified code of direct taxes in the winter session before the Parliament. Time and again the voluntary organizations like Chamber of Tax Consultants, Bombay Chartered Accounts Society, All India Federation of Tax Practitioners, etc., have been representing that the professionals should be actively involved in the process of drafting a new legislation or amending the present one. However, all such representations have not yielded any results.

The active participation of the professionals at the drafting stage will help in bringing clarity and simplicity to tax laws. The professionals can make the tax law easily implementable in the interests of citizens as well as the State. On a note of caution, the professionals should not only point out the defects but also should help to plug the loopholes which result into retrospective amendments after the disputes travel up to the Hon'ble Supreme Court. This will save a great deal of time, energy and resources of the assessee as well as the State.

Simplification of Tax laws is a myth. We professionals have been vociferously canvassing for creating a system of tax administration which is sensitive and has checks and balances to safeguard the interest of the nation keeping the assessee as the central feature. The first step towards the above will be bringing transparency in the policy making and accountability in the tax administration. The object of simplification is to make the tax gathering apparatus smooth and not to generate disputes in the process of tax collection. This object can well be achieved by what we professionals have been suggesting about the transparency and accountability.

This issue has been designed keeping in mind the professional’s requirement to respond to the Assessment Orders being finalized in the month of December. We have collected articles from very eminent authors. The contents of the articles are exhaustive. Hope this issue comes in handy while you are preparing an appeal against the assessment orders passed in this month. We sincerely thank all the authors for contributing to this issue.