The government of India has been extolled for initiatives on the digital front that has been familiarized encompassing various aspects of the economy. India has been at the front of introducing new digital measures across the economy. This year’s Budget was a digital budget, the govt has introduced measures for all the valuations up to the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) level.
To further take ahead the step of digitalization and to scale back the time interval for income tax returns, the tax Department launched a replacement e-filing portal on the 7th of June this year. The date 7 June seems to be synonymous with revolutionary developments within the sphere of taxation across the planet because it was on this date 4 years ago that India signed the Multilateral Instrument (MLI) in Paris while committing itself to the bottom Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) measures initiated by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The Minister of Law & Justice, Communications and Electronics & IT, formally launched the e-filing portal of ITAT. Hope has been expressed that with the mixture of the digital courtroom, virtual hearings, and ‘Mobile Application’ providing judicial information, paperless courts will soon be a reality in ITAT. The Finance Minister invited suggestions on such issues from various stakeholders.
As per sources, the Ministry received quite 2000 issues and representation points from various stakeholders. To deal with these issues, a gathering was persisted the 22nd of June amongst the Finance Ministry, the seller, and various stakeholders. This may impact the opposite commercial aspects which might be hooked into having a singular number for taxation purposes. Senior citizens, whose income details enable them to file the income-tax returns much before the schedule, were also denied permission to upload the income-tax return on the portal.
Where in it had been stated that employment has commenced fixing the technical issues noticed within the functioning of the portal and resources are augmented for the execution of the project on the hardware and application side, where some issues have already been identified and glued. It had been also stated that certain issues in reference to e-proceedings, Form 15CA/15CB, Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) statements, Digital Signature Certificate, viewing of past Income-tax returns, etc. are expected to be resolved soon.
Way forward
On the Indian demographic front, where we are still struggling to return out of the second wave, an issue arises on whether the new income-tax e-filing portal was really the necessity of the hour considering the continued system has already incorporated many changes within a previous couple of years.
Secondly, taking into consideration that the new system would have teething problems which any new system is probably going to possess, it’s going to not in the least be out of place for the govt to possess both the old and therefore the new systems run parallel to make sure that compliance isn’t being compromised alongside a smoother transition to advanced compliance systems.
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