Whether ITO promotion is losing its sheen?

 To be an Income Tax Officer had been a dream to many of the young officials of the department. Every year thousands of employees prepare themselves for departmental exams to fulfill their ambition to be a gazetted officer of the department. 

Recently we have noticed some deviation to this trend. Some Inspectors are refusing promotion to the post of ITOs. In this month as many as six Inspectors in Bengaluru declined to get promoted in one go. It is quite unprecedented.

Now, the question is, why this is happening? To be an ITO from the clerical level needs to qualify for three departmental exams and at least 15 to 20 years of waiting. Still, everybody after qualifying is not accepting the promotion. One of the reasons may be the poor increase in remuneration against inviting a lot of responsibility. After the introduction of the MACP scheme, getting a promotion or not matters little in terms of monetary benefit. The promotional benefit is also reduced now. If an Inspector gets promoted to ITO, he loses Petrol Allowance and invites the possibility of being transferred out of the metropolis and thus getting his HRA reduced. What he will earn instead? A huge burden of responsibility and effectively less take-home pay at the beginning. In the present scenario of faceless assessment, the workload may not be anticipated right now.

So the time has come to take steps to get the benefits and perks revised for the officer. Otherwise in the long run there will be very less people available to be promoted to the once prize post, and remember ITOs can not be recruited but have to be promoted.