CBDT plans paperless I-T assessment over emails
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Scared of facing income tax officer? In a major initiative to address tax harassment, the authorities plan to do paperless income tax assessment over emails.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has rolled out a pilot project whereby e-hearing would be conducted in 100 cases.
"This would eliminate the necessity of visiting the income-tax offices by the taxpayers, particularly in smaller cases involving limited issues and where taxpayer is able to provide details required by the assessing officer without necessitating his physical presence," the apex direct taxes body said in a directive to field officers.
Pilots would be conducted in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and Chennai for non-corporate cases.
The NDA government has promised a 'fair, predictable and stable' tax regime in the country.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, in an interaction with the CBDT chief and revenue secretary some time back, had emphasised the need to improve the department's interface with taxpayers. He had suggested cutting down on physical interface of taxpayers with tax authorities as that itself is sometimes seen as harassment and switch over to e-hearing scenario.
Tax experts welcomed the CBDT initiative.
Tax authorities have overtime gained an image that they harass and terrorise taxpayers and the board has undertaken a number of efforts to shed that tag. It has already asked tax officials not to give multiple appointments to taxpayers for any interaction as also to avoid roving enquiry in case of a scrutiny.
The board is taking steps to develop a dedicated standardised platform for electronic-interface with taxpayers.
Cases selected for scrutiny based on information in annual information return or mismatch in tax deducted at source would be taken up as part of this exercise. Tax authorities would obtain prior consent of taxpayers before taking up their case in the pilot.
At present, the department conducts scrutiny of up to 2% of the total number of tax returns filed on these parameters through a random selection by computer-aided scrutiny selection system. (Economic Times)
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has rolled out a pilot project whereby e-hearing would be conducted in 100 cases.
"This would eliminate the necessity of visiting the income-tax offices by the taxpayers, particularly in smaller cases involving limited issues and where taxpayer is able to provide details required by the assessing officer without necessitating his physical presence," the apex direct taxes body said in a directive to field officers.
Pilots would be conducted in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and Chennai for non-corporate cases.
The NDA government has promised a 'fair, predictable and stable' tax regime in the country.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, in an interaction with the CBDT chief and revenue secretary some time back, had emphasised the need to improve the department's interface with taxpayers. He had suggested cutting down on physical interface of taxpayers with tax authorities as that itself is sometimes seen as harassment and switch over to e-hearing scenario.
Tax experts welcomed the CBDT initiative.
Tax authorities have overtime gained an image that they harass and terrorise taxpayers and the board has undertaken a number of efforts to shed that tag. It has already asked tax officials not to give multiple appointments to taxpayers for any interaction as also to avoid roving enquiry in case of a scrutiny.
The board is taking steps to develop a dedicated standardised platform for electronic-interface with taxpayers.
Cases selected for scrutiny based on information in annual information return or mismatch in tax deducted at source would be taken up as part of this exercise. Tax authorities would obtain prior consent of taxpayers before taking up their case in the pilot.
At present, the department conducts scrutiny of up to 2% of the total number of tax returns filed on these parameters through a random selection by computer-aided scrutiny selection system. (Economic Times)
Category : CBDT | Comments : 1 | Hits : 864
Comments
manish parekh
21-Oct-2015 , 12:22:02 pmFirstly with implementation of on-line returns & on-line refunds, the lower level harassment ( read corruption) was minimised. Now with this step of e-assessments, the next level’s harassment will be reduced (hopefully!) Although the officers are not following the CBDT circular no. 7/2014 dated 26.09.2014 wherein CBDT had instructed officers to restrict the scrutiny to AIR/CIB information for CA