The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Information technology will help widen tax base: official

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 03, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Information technology will help widen tax base: official

Special Correspondent

"Revenue collection will double or even quadruple"

CHENNAI: Information technology will revolutionise the working of the Income Tax Department and soon, those who evade tax, might find it difficult to do so, Santosh Datta, Chief Commissioner of Income Tax and Director-General of IT (Investigation), said on Thursday.

Addressing a seminar on `Information Technology for Chartered Accountants,' organised by the Southern India Regional Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India here, Mr. Datta said using the technology, the Department would widen and deepen the tax base. Within the next five years, the revenue collection would double or even quadruple, thanks to information technology.

The department had already introduced information technology-enabled services. Now it was networking all income tax offices. Once the network was established, all offices could process the returns on-line. Processed in remote locations, these could be monitored by the Commissioner of Income tax or the Chief Commissioners of Income Tax in Chennai, Madurai or Coimbatore.

The department would also introduce mass processing of salary returns in Chennai. All salaried taxpayers would get refunds within four months of filing their returns. The system had been successfully implemented in Mumbai.

Salary returns

By June this year, mass processing of salary returns would come into effect and the hassles involved in collecting refunds would be reduced.

It had introduced an electronic clearing scheme on a pilot basis in Chennai for issue of refunds, electronic filing of TDS returns from 2004-05, electronic filing of returns from 2005-06 and online tax accounting system, under which the taxpayer needed only one challan in the place of quadruplicate challans.

K.C. Chakrabarty, Chairman and Managing Director of Indian Bank, said information revolution could be brought by auditors. He wanted the chartered accounts to make use of the technology to get more information from their clients and process them for their betterment.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail