Ministry of Finance
Departmentof Revenue
Central Boardof Direct Taxes
PRESS RELEASE
New Delhi, 27th October, 2015
Subject:Finance Minister launches
the“e-Sahyog” pilot project of the Income-tax Department.
The Income-tax Department is committed
to the ‘Digital India’ initiative of the Government of India.The Finance
Minister today 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 to taxpayers
whose returns have not 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 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 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 closed. The taxpayer can check
the updated status by logging in to the e-filing portal.
The Finance Minister also inaugurated a
drive to provide public service byholding “special PAN camps in remote areas”.
Under this drive, 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 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 easethe 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 lakhand will be required to quote PAN as announced in the
Budget speech of 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 assessees 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 taxpayer satisfaction.
(Shefali Shah)
Pr. Commissioner of Income Tax
(OSD)
Official Spokesperson, CBDT
