While businesses have been quick to adapt to the latest technologies, the government is also not lagging behind the industry when it comes to tech adoption to manage its business processes, said a senior official of the Income Tax department.
“Businesses are doing well in adapting to technology and at the same time, the government is also trying to keep pace with them. Both the Income Tax as well as Indirect Tax departments have taken a number of initiatives in digitising their processes and compliance requirements to ease the compliance burden of taxpayers,” Sunil Mathur, Director General of Income Tax Investigation (TN & Puducherry) said here on Saturday.
He was delivering the inaugural address at ‘Reimagining Business in New India’, a one-day business conclave organised by the Madras Management Association (MMA) in partnership with Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.
Commending the diverse range of sessions, Mathur said it is interesting to note that ‘Tax Technology- Current and Future Trends’ is also one of the sessions of the conclave.
Numerous initiatives
Highlighting the government efforts, Mathur said in the last 10 years, the government has brought numerous initiatives including online payment of taxes, PAN application and allotment, filing of income tax and TDS returns, and online processing of returns, refunds all of which have been fully digitised.
“In August 2020, the government has yet again taken a transformative decision to honour the honest taxpayers by introducing faceless income tax assessment,” Mathur said.
Highlighting its features, he said a taxpayer, whose case has been selected for scrutiny need not go to the Income Tax department but notices will be issued online and they can file their responses online.
He also said, the feature also removed the titular jurisdiction, and hence a scrutiny assessment of a taxpayer in Tamil Nadu can now be assessed by an officer from any part of the country. The assessing officer (AO) will do a group assessment with other officers and prepare a draft order, which will be passed on to the review unit, and only after its review, the final order will be passed, Mathur noted.
He added that although there were some teething problems initially, the faceless scheme is now almost implemented and has now been extended to include the Faceless Penalty Scheme, and Faceless Appeal Scheme, etc.