Income Tax Dept sets up panel to simplify tax law

Justice R.V. Easwar committee comprising accountants, advocates, and IRS bureaucrats will look into provisions that are leading to litigation due to different interpretations.

The Income Tax Department on Tuesday announced that it has set up a committee in order to simplify the provisions of the Income Tax Act, 1961. The committee will be chaired by Justice R.V. Easwar, a former Judge of the Delhi High Court and former President, Income Tax Appellate Tribunal.

The committee’s objective is to study and identify the provisions or phrases in the Act that are leading to litigation due to different interpretations, that are impacting the ease of doing business, and those that can be simplified.

The committee is also tasked with suggesting alternatives to these provisions or phrases “to bring about predictability and certainty in tax laws without substantial impact on the tax base and revenue collection”, the Central Board of Direct Taxes said in a release.

Members of the committee include accountants, advocates, and current and former bureaucrats from the Indian Revenue Service.

e-sahyog

In a separate bid to simply tax issues, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday launched a pilot project of 'e-sahyog', an initiative by the Income Tax Department to provide an online portal to help taxpayers resolve any mismatches in their returns without having to visit the Income Tax Department offices.

“Under this initiative the Department will provide an end to end e-service using SMS, e-mails to inform the taxpayers of the mismatch. The taxpayer 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 Income Tax Department said in a release.

Mr Jaitley on Tuesday also inaugurated a two-day drive to increase the penetration of PAN cards by holding special PAN camps in remote areas. Under this drive, special PAN camps are being held over two days at 43 remote semi-urban and rural locations. 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 Rs 1 lakh,” the release said.