By Prakash Bikram Shah

Dhangadhi, Mar : 6 People of four districts of Sudurpashchim State have to come to Dhangadhi to pay their taxes as the only Inland Revenue Office (IRO) of the region is located here. But those visiting the office complain that the employees are rude and irresponsible.
They say that they are treated like criminals, as if they had caused damage to the society rather than dutiful citizens paying their taxes.
Uddhab Singh Dhami of Gauriganga Municipality – 10 visited the office to obtain a PAN for his goat farm but was discouraged by the staff’s behaviour. “The employees don’t respond to our queries. They just stay quiet when we talk to them,” he said.
Ramesh Chaudhari of Kailari Gaunpalika, Kailali said, “The state runs on our taxes; from our taxes they receive their salaries, still they treat us with such disrespect.”
Another service-seeker Laxmi Ram Acharya demanded that the tax collection office be opened at the local level. “Coming here we waste our time and the employees humiliate us,” he expressed his ire.
The employees also remain absent from their workplaces for hours on end in the name of lunch. The employees only get a one-hour lunch break during the day but they take the liberty of staying out for 1.5 hours or more.
When they are not out on long lunch breaks, they delay people’s work claiming internet issues. They sometimes enter the wrong details into the system and then correcting it is another hassle.
The months of December/January, March/April and June/July are particularly busy for the revenue office as many people come at this time with their tax-related works. This forces the service-seekers to stand in long lines under the open sky.
“We can bear the sun and cold but things get difficult when it rains,” many service-seekers said. There is no structure providing cover to the people who come to the office.
The crowds are so large and mismanaged at the IRO that people choose to come during bandhs and strikes to avoid the large horde. Bhan Singh Thagunna from Godawari Municipality came to the office to collect her tax clearance certificate for the first time in six months during the two-day closure called by the Tharuhat group.
All this unprofessional behaviour forces people to employ brokers and middlemen to get their work done quicker. But these brokers charge hefty sums of money.
And this problem is set to get worse because the number of tax payers is increasing in the office. According to IRO Dhangadhi, in the first eight months of the fiscal year 2019/20, the number of tax payers increased by 50,000.
With the increase in tax payers, the amount of tax collected has also increased. The office collected Rs. 1,997,031,000 in revenues till the month of Magh (January/February) in the fiscal year 2019/20. That amount increased to Rs. 2,670,574,000 for the same time period this fiscal year.But despite all this, the dismissive behaviour of the employees has not changed.
Chandra Kumar Shrestha, Chief Tax Officer at the Dhangadhi IRO, acknowledged that service-seekers faced hassles but stated that steps were being taken to resolve them.
“A new revenue office has opened in Lamki, Kailali while others are also set to open in Achham and Doti,” he informed, adding, “This will help manage the crowds.” He also said that the service delivery process had been made more efficient.
“Earlier, the service-seekers needed to go door-to-door with their files, but now the files get processed and delivered to them,” he said. “The bank is also right within our premises and any erroneous entry in the system can be corrected within one month without any problem,” he added.
He also said that more employees were being mobilised during the busy months. He assured that he took every complaint seriously and was addressing it, “Whenever I have received complaints, I have called the employees personally and asked them to improve their behaviour.”
He also said this of the current complaints, “Perhaps the people are thinking of the old days and making these comments but things have improved significantly now.”

(Translated by Aashish Mishra)