" E-Sahyog" Pilot Project of The Income-Tax Department to Facilitate Taxpayers

The Union Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley Launches The “E-Sahyog” Pilot Project of The Income-Tax Department to Facilitate Taxpayers 

The Income-tax Department is committed to the ‘Digital India’ initiative of the Government of India. The Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley launched here today 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.

The Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley also inaugurated a drive to provide public service at peoples’ door step byholding “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 Finance Minister interacted with applicants and officials at seven of these camps through a video conference. More such camps will be held through the year. 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.

On this occasion, the Finance Minister stated that the objective of the Income Tax Department is to make life as easy as possible for the assesses and difficult only for those who consciously evade taxes. These digital initiatives will help in creating a positive environment.

These initiatives of the Department are expected to significantly reduce the burden of compliance on taxpayers and enhance the taxpayers’ satisfaction. 

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Government Sets-Up A Committee to Simplify The Provisions of The Income Tax Act, 1961 

The Government of India has constituted a Committee with a view to simplify the provisions of the Income Tax Act, 1961, with the following composition:

(i)                 Justice R.V. Easwar, (Retd.), former Judge,

Delhi High Court and former President, ITAT    -           Chairman

(ii)               Shri V.K. Bhasin, former Law Secretary              -           Member

(iii)             Shri Vinod Jain, Chartered Accountant               -           Member

(iv)             Shri Rajiv Memani, Consultant                             -           Member

(v)               Shri Ravi Gupta, Sr. Advocate                             -           Member

(vi)             Shri Mukesh Patel, Chartered Accountant           -           Member

(vii)           Shri Ajay Bahl, Consultant                                   -           Member

(viii)         Shri Pradip P. Shah, Investment Adviser             -           Member

(ix)             Shri Arvind Modi, IRS (IT:81009)                       -           Member

(x)               Dr. Vinay Kumar Singh, IRS (IT:95006)             -           Member

            The Terms of Reference (ToR) of the Committee shall be as follows:

i)          To study and identify the provisions/phrases in the Act which are leading to litigation due to different interpretations;

ii)         To study and identify the provisions which are impacting the ease of doing business;

iii)        To study and identify the areas and provisions of the Act for simplification in the light of the existing jurisprudence;

iv)        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; and

            The Committee shall set its own procedures for regulating its work.  The Committee can also work in Sub-Groups and the draft prepared by the Sub-Groups can then be approved by the whole Committee. The Committee will put its draft recommendations in the public domain. After stakeholder consultations, the Committee will formalise its recommendations. The Committee can give its recommendations in batches. The First Batch containing as many recommendations as possible shall be submitted by 31^st January, 2016.

            The Term of the Committee shall be for a period of one year from the date of its constitution.