CBDT pushes for online tax reforms

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) is formulating a Vision 2010 document to push for reforms in areas like computerisation.

Establishing a national data bank and overhauling tax-payers services are among other objectives of the document. The move is being made after Finance Minister P Chidambaram's directive to use non-intrusive techniques to check tax evasion.

Revenue department officials told Business Standard that the CBDT had constituted a high-powered committee headed by its Chairman Berjinder Singh and six other members to draft the vision document by August 30, 2005.

Officials said a sub-committee had also been formed to do the initial work of collecting and processing necessary inputs. This committee is headed by Member (Investigation) JG Pendse.

"The main objective of the vision document will be to put in place a sophisticated, modern and computerised tax system which will allow tax payers to file returns online, get refund credits directly to their bank accounts and track the status of their tax payments and status of returns," an official said.

Officials said inputs for the documents were also being sought from industry associations like Ficci and CII.

They also said suggestions had been made by zonal tax offices, which included setting up of a single national data bank and de-duplication of the permanent account number.

Other suggestions include making the CBDT financially and administratively autonomous and providing mobile outfits for investigation and information collection.

Another suggestion was to set up revenue posts abroad in Indian missions or embassies for trans-national information and investigation purposes, and keeping employers under regular surveys.

Meanwhile, the CBDT has also set up an internal committee to address operational problems faced by the online tax accounting system (OLTAS).

The problems included misclassification of major heads, non-reporting of data by banks and challan entries going into suspense accounts.

Officials said the committee had recommended that challans be scanned at the offices of the zonal accounts officers and an offline archive of challan images created in each regional computer centre (RCC).

The committee has also suggested that for the current financial year, a double-copy challan be introduced so that data-capturing, as was the practice in the pre-OLTAS days, be done at RCCs till the quality of data coming on OLTAS reach an acceptable level.