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The National Judicial Reference System (NJRS) is a project of Indian Income Tax Department to streamline its tax litigation system. NJRS aims to be a comprehensive repository of all Appeals and Judgments related to Direct Taxes in India. The Income Tax Department is the largest litigant in India and NJRS will help the department in decongesting and streamlining the huge backlog of litigation in various courts and Tribunals related to direct tax cases. A limited edition of the portal (beta version) was launched in March 2015. Full and public internationalization of the portal is in progress. The portal will enable the department to monitor appeals progress through the appeal stages, undertake policy analysis for issues leading to rising litigation and do research for strengthening their cases by taking reference from previous orders made by the courts tax appeals.〔(Finance ministry launches ambitious national electronic I-T judicial database )〕 ==Background == The Income Tax Department (ITD) is responsible for collecting Direct Taxes and administering the Income Tax Law and other direct tax statutes for Government of India. The department has offices in 510 cities and towns across India. There are 3420 assessment units in the department and a sanctioned strength of about 8600 at the level of ITOs and above. These are to increase to about 4500 and 11600 respectively as a result of the recently approved restructuring in the department. Tax litigation is an integral component of any modern tax administration. It not only helps resolve disputes between the tax payers and the tax admin istration, it also helps in the interpretation of tax issues and in planning transactions. The Indian Tax laws also provide an elaborate mechanism for resolution of tax disputes - both administrative involving the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals) and various Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanisms, as well as, through the appeal jurisdictions of the (Income Tax Apellate Tribuna ) l, High Courts and the Supreme Court of India. However, increasing volumes of litigation in various tribunals and courts, the long time taken for finalization of a tax dispute and varied interpretations of tax law taken by both tax officials and various judicial fora has become a cause of concern. The CAG, in its Performance Audit Report No. - 20 of 2009-10,〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://saiindia.gov.in/english/home/our_products/audit_report/government_wise/union_audit/recent_reports/union_performance/2009_2010/Direct_Taxes/Report_no_20/Report_no_20.html )〕 states that the dimensions of disputes in income tax are staggering and that it takes a long time to settle tax disputes. The report also states that the Income Tax Department lacks credible and reliable data on the volume and impact of appeals which points to weak internal controls. Inadequate internal control in turn lead to time barring of appeals and delays in implementation of appellate orders. The CAG report recommended automation of receipt and disposal of appellate orders. Besides maintenance of proper litigation database, there is also a need to continuously identify contentious legal issues, analyse them and take corrective action to clarify the law. An Office Memorandum of the Central Board of Direct Taxes states that a large part of litigation in the Direct Taxes matters involves interpretation of legal provisions. Inconsistent approach on contentious legal issues by officers of the department gives rise to further litigation.〔(【引用サイトリンク】279/M-61/2012-ITJ ), DATED 28-8-2012 - INSTITUTIONAL MECHANISM FOR FORMING DEPARTMENTAL VIEW ON CONTENTIOUS LEGAL ISSUES">url=http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/Communications/Circular/910110000000000799.htm )〕 There have also been suggestions to identify and flag areas through the departments website where there are issues relating to interpretation of the tax law, so as to give taxpayers an insight into existing areas of litigation so they can avoid, as far as possible, taking litigation prone positions in their tax returns.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.pwc.in/en_IN/in/assets/pdfs/publications/2014/navigating-tax-controversy-in-india-october-2014.pdf )〕 The NJRS project was taken up by the Income Tax Department to create an electronic platform as a replacement for the manual method of managing litigation. NJRS will have two components: * Appeals Repository & Management System - an electronic database all pending appeals at Income Tax Appellate Tribunal(ITAT), High Courts (HCs) and Supreme Court of India (SC). * Judicial Research & Reference System - an electronic database of all orders/judgments of ITAT, Authority of Advance Ruling, HCs and SC. Both databases will be cross referenced, have suitable metadata & key-phrases and have enterprise class search engine to be enable identification of disputed issues across cases for improved decision making. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「National Judicial Reference System」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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