Finance Minister launches the digital initiative

“e-Sahyog” pilot project to facilitate taxpayers

The “e-Sahyog” project launched on a pilot basis is aimed at reducing compliance cost, especially for small taxpayers. The objective of “e-Sahyog” is to provide an online mechanism to resolve mismatches in Income-tax returns of those assesses whose returns have been selected for scrutiny, without visiting the Income Tax Office

The Income-tax Department is committed to the ‘Digital India’ initiative of the Government of India. The Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley launched an “e-Sahyog” pilot project which furthers the Department’s commitment to work in an e-environment and reduces the need for the taxpayer to physically appear before tax authorities. The “e-Sahyog” project launched on a pilot basis is aimed at reducing compliance cost, especially for small taxpayers. The objective of “e-Sahyog” is to provide an online mechanism to resolve mismatches in Income-tax returns of those assesses whose returns have been selected for scrutiny, without visiting the Income Tax Office. Under this initiative the Department will provide an end to end e-service using SMS, e-mails to inform the tax assesses of the mismatch. The taxpayers will simply need to visit the e-filing portal and log in with their user-ID and password to view mismatch related information and submit online response on the issue. The responses submitted online by the taxpayers will be processed and if the response and other information are found satisfactory as per automated closure rules, the issue will be treated as closed. The taxpayers can check the updated status by logging in to the e-filing portal. These initiatives of the Department are expected to significantly reduce the burden of compliance on taxpayers and enhance the taxpayers‟ satisfaction. The Hon’ble Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley also inaugurated a drive to provide public service at peoples door step by holding “special PAN camps in remote areas”. Under this campaign, special PAN camps are being held over two days at forty- three remote, semi urban and rural locations across India in the first instance to facilitate obtaining of PAN card by persons residing in such areas. The camps will ease the burden of compliance for persons residing in remote, semi urban and rural areas who wish to enter into transactions of purchase or sale above rupees one lakh and will be required to quote PAN as announced by the Finance Minister in his Budget Speech 2015-16. In addition, the Government of India has constituted a Committee with a view to simplify the provisions of the Income Tax Act, 1961. The Terms of Reference (ToR) of the Committee shall be as follows: ·         To study and identify the provisions/phrases in the Act which are leading to litigation due to different interpretations; ·         To study and identify the provisions which are impacting the ease of doing business; ·         To study and identify the areas and provisions of the Act for simplification in the light of the existing jurisprudence; ·         To suggest alternatives and modifications to the existing provisions and areas so identified to bring about predictability and certainty in tax laws without substantial impact on the tax base and revenue collection;