The Indian government has been extolled for the several new initiatives on the digital front that has been introduced encompassing a variety of elements of the economy. Digitalisation has taken the world by storm and India has also been in the forefront of introducing new digital measures across the economy. This year’s Budget was also a digital price range. The government has also introduced measures for all the assessments up to the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) level, to be faceless.
This is getting accomplished with an objective to obtain ease of compliance and decrease discretion. These measures are pretty humble and are certainly sincere attempts to enhance the general efficiency of the operations and enhance productivity. However, they bring with it their personal set of challenges as digitalization is a alter which could almost certainly face most resistance by a entire generation seeing themselves struggling to preserve pace with the strategies of operating in the new walks of life.
To additional take ahead the step of digitalization and to decrease the processing time for revenue-tax returns, the Income Tax Department launched a new e-filing portal on the 7th June this year. This initiative indicates the government’s resolve to embrace digitalization and reap its rewards in the extended run in particular for the duration of the attempting pandemic occasions. It would be a surprise if such rapidly-paced measures are not met with their personal set of challenges and hurdles. The date 7 June appears to be synonymous with revolutionary developments in the sphere of taxation across the world as it was on this date 4 years ago that India signed the Multilateral Instrument (MLI) in Paris although committing itself to the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) measures initiated by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Co-incidentally, the Union Minister for Law & Justice, Communications and Electronics & IT, formally launched the e-filing portal of ITAT, ‘itat e-dwar’ a handful of days ago. Hope has been expressed that with the mixture of digital court area, virtual hearings and ‘Mobile Application’ delivering judicial information and facts, paperless courts will quickly be a reality in ITAT. Only time will inform if that would certainly be a fruitful reality.
Since its launch on the 7th June, there had been a lot of glitches/troubles in the functioning of the new portal. The Ministry of Finance invited recommendations on such glitches/troubles from a variety of stakeholders. As per sources, the Ministry received more than 2000 troubles and representation points from a variety of stakeholders. To address these troubles, a meeting was held on the 22nd June amongst the Finance Ministry, the vendor and a variety of stakeholders.
While the troubles have currently been brought up on the discussion table, some imminent ones could just go on to denote the gravity of the predicament and the measures that could now be necessary to set ideal the predicament. For instance, to start off with, the access to one’s personal account in the revenue-tax portal has itself been a challenge witnessed by several for the project to be a non-starter. In some circumstances, newly incorporated corporations/ firms and so on. have been unable to get the initially-time registration carried out on the portal.
This could effect the other industrial elements which would be dependent on obtaining a one of a kind identification quantity for taxation purposes. In several circumstances, senior citizens, whose revenue information allow them to file the revenue-tax returns significantly ahead of the schedule, had been also denied the permission to upload the revenue-tax return on the portal. This could place a strain on the portal when all the taxpayers flood the method to access it for adhering for compliances. Even the new utility viz. the Json utility is not appropriately functional, resulting in denying the taxpayers to file their revenue-tax returns.
There are a lot of such troubles, huge and tiny, exactly where every single challenge requirements to be addressed in the most immaculate and detailed manner. The troubles have been taken up earnestly and attempts are getting made to resolve them with timelines in spot.
A Press Release was issued by the government not too long ago, wherein it was stated that work has commenced to repair the technical troubles noticed in the functioning of the portal and sources have been augmented for execution of the project on hardware and application side, exactly where some troubles have currently been identified and fixed. Further, it was also stated that particular troubles in regard to e-proceedings, Form 15CA/15CB, Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) statements, Digital Signature Certificate (DSC), viewing of previous Income-tax returns and so on. are anticipated to be resolved quickly.
One can count on that it could take some time for the finer nuances to be addressed and tested prior to implementing them to make certain a hassle-absolutely free portal. With this, one can count on addressing the aforesaid bottlenecks, some other larger technical glitches could will need more time and testing to establish the veracity of the applications and error-absolutely free operation.
Way forward
For more than a year, we have witnessed a absolutely new way of living which was in no way imagined, specifically the digital strategies of performing issues not only in the sphere of tax laws but spanning across all walks of life cutting across borders. On the Indian demographic front, exactly where we are nevertheless struggling to come out of the second wave, a query arises as to whether or not the new revenue-tax e-filing portal was truly the will need of the hour thinking of the ongoing method has currently incorporated several alterations in the last handful of years.
Without prejudice to the above, ideally, when a new method of a huge magnitude (like the revenue-tax portal) is launched, some inherent checks will need to be in spot to make certain a seamless functioning. ‘Operational efficacy’ is the stepping-stone of any new method on the basis of which the accomplishment of the method can then be ascertained. For this, an ‘exhaustive testing’ creating precise output is a protocol which requirements to be adhered to prior to the method goes live. Probably, a dry run ought to have been performed to iron out the discrepancies prior to the portal could have gone live. Even now, a dry run would be best to test the efficacy of the new portal.
Secondly, taking into account that the new method would have teething troubles which any new method is probably to have, it could not at all be out of spot for the government to have each the old and the new systems run parallel to make certain that compliance is not getting compromised along with a smoother transition to sophisticated compliance systems.
In hindsight, even when the new portal is operational with one hundred per cent efficiency, the old portal must be in use for a handful of months for the taxpayers so that a gradual and a seamless transitioning would support obtain the preferred objectives of the government of ease of compliance and a reduction in a discretionary way of functioning.
(By Sanjiv K. Chaudhary, Chartered Accountant)
Disclaimer: These are the private views of the author.