New Delhi, October 8: It was not very long ago when the income tax department faced a lot of backlash for alleged harassment by tax officials following the death of Café Coffee Day founder V.G. Siddhartha. However, the charge was refuted by the department.
In a bid to end the physical interface between the assesse and tax officials the income tax department identified 58332 cases for scrutiny under the newly launched e-assessment scheme. Now, e-assessment is expected to eliminate the possibility of corruption as there is no physical interface between officials and taxpayers. This is part of the Narendra Modi administration’s efforts to make tax compliance easier for businesses and individual taxpayers. And finance minister Nirmala Sithatraman in her maiden budget also reiterated the fact that honest tax payers should not worry.
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Renowned industrialists from time to time have aired their opinion about the harassment by tax officials. Mohandas Pai , a former director at Infosys Ltd, has said that tax officials who have to meet their annual tax collection targets put pressure on companies to pay up even if they do not concur with the amounts demanded, which leads to litigation. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, chairperson and managing director and founder of biopharmaceuticals firm Biocon Ltd, told The Telegraph in an article published on Sunday that “a government official" called her recently and told her not to speak about issues such as ‘income tax harassment’.
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Electronic notices have already been served for the cases pertaining to assessment year 2018-19 (FY18).
“Taxpayers have been advised to check their registered e-filing accounts/email ids and have been requested to furnish reply within 15 days," said the tax department statement.
With this e-assessment, there is an expectation that this system will improve transparency and will allow to do better assessment of income that could help the government to boost its revenue.
India has more than 74 million effective direct tax payers, including those who have not filed tax returns but have had their taxes deducted at source by employers. Eventually, the scope of e-assessment will be scaled to a larger section of taxpayers.
Experts are of the opinion that faceless assessment, which extensively uses technology and modern communication facilities, has several advantages. Under this scheme taxpayers will be served notices through emails and on their registered accounts on the e-filing portal. They will also be alerted through text messages. Taxpayers can email their responses to the National e-Assessment Centre, which is manned by 800 officials across the country.
