Cabinet nod to integrated e-filing and centralised processing centre

Note4students

Mains Paper 3: Economy | Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization of resources, growth, development and employment.

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important:

Prelims level: CPC-ITR 2.0

Mains level: IT returns facilitation through technology measures

News

• The Union Cabinet has approved corpus sum for integrated e-filing and centralised processing centre-2.0, a Project-of the Income Tax Department.

CPC-ITR 2.0

1. The broad objectives of the project include a faster and accurate outcome for the taxpayer, first-time-right approach, enhancing the user experience at all stages, and improving taxpayer awareness and education through continuous engagement.
2. It various functionalities such as pre-filling of ITR and acceptance by taxpayer as a means to improve accuracy and to reduce refund/processing turnaround time drastically.
3. The decision will ensure horizontal equity by processing returns filed by all categories of taxpayers across the country in a consistent, uniform, rule-driven, identity blind manner.
4. This will assure fairness in tax treatment to every taxpayer irrespective of their status.

Utility of the System

1. The proposal ensures the continuation of the IT Department’s goal towards business transformation through technology.
2. The E-filing and CPC projects have enabled end to end automation of all processes within the Department using various innovative methods to provide taxpayer services and to promote voluntary compliance.
3. At present, it takes around 63 days to deal with income tax return process but this will be completed just in one day after the success of the ‘integration project’.
4. Through digital media platform, we can provide rapid facilities to taxpayers, be it real-time processing of income tax returns, ease in filing accurate returns, resolve grievances of taxpayers and spread awareness.