Prime Minister to launch platform for Transparent taxation – Honoring the honest

PMO (Prime minister Officer) has released a press release today, stating that Prime Minister will launch a portal for honest taxpayers via video conferencing on 13 August 2020 at 11:00 am ahead of Independence day.

The event will be witnessed by various Chambers of Commerce, Trade Associations, Chartered Accountants’ associations and also eminent taxpayers, apart from the officers and officials of Income Tax Department.

Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Shrimati Nirmala Sitharaman and Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Shri Anurag Singh Thakur will also present on the occasion.

The invitation for the launch of the new scheme was shared by P C Mody, Chairman, Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), on Tuesday with senior tax officers.

The above platform is said to be a step forward in the already announced tax reforms which include reduction of Corporate Tax rates from 30 percent to 22 percent last year and for new manufacturing units the rates were reduced to 15 percent. Dividend distribution Tax was also abolished.

Further, several initiatives have been taken by the CBDT for bringing in efficiency and transparency in the functioning of the IT Department. This includes bringing more transparency in official communication through the newly introduced Document Identification Number (DIN) wherein every communication of the Department would carry a computer generated unique document identification number.

Similarly, to increase the ease of compliance for taxpayers, IT Department has moved forward with prefilling of income tax returns to make compliance more convenient for individual taxpayers. Compliance norms for startups have also been simplified.

With a view to provide for resolution of pending tax disputes the IT Department also brought out the Direct Tax “Vivad se Vishwas Act, 2020” under which declarations for settling disputes are being filed currently. To effectively reduce taxpayer grievances / litigation, the monetary thresholds for filing of departmental appeals in various appellate Courts have been raised.

Although an across-the-board rollout of faceless assessment is yet to come through, the tax department has disposed of about 14 per cent of the 58,000 cases selected in the first phase that was launched in October 2019. The Finance Ministry data released last week showed that scrutiny by the Income Tax department had reduced to 0.25 per cent of the total Income Tax Returns (ITRs) in assessment year 2018-19 after rising to 0.55 per cent in the assessment year 2017-18, the year of demonetisation.

Looking at the above press release there is no clarity as to what function will this portal perform, it can be for numerous things like:

1. Providing social security or medical relief to honest tax payers based on their tax paid or paying pension to honest tax payers after retirement based on tax paid as is done in other developed countries.

2. Providing platform for easy filing of returns and simplifying procedure for taxation.

3. Transparent taxation can also mean just showing the taxpayers utilisation of their tax paid and providing them a report as to how amount has been utilised.

To view Press release CLICK HERE.

Link for Live vide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EHlFlcvpcA

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