I-T assessments to be completely online

Income tax assessments will be “completely faceless”, without the taxpayer having to face the taxman, in about two years and assessees will be provided pre-filled return forms as part of the government’s initiative to simplify procedures, a senior government official said.

Central Board of Direct Taxes Chairman Sushil Chandra said that about 2.06 lakh income tax assessment cases were handled online by the department last year, as part of the ‘nameless and faceless’ delivery of service to taxpayers.

He added that the recent government sanction to create the advanced Centralised Processing Centre 2.0 in the I-T Department is a precursor to these futuristic proposals.

“CPC 2.0 has got a lot of new advantages. A pre-filled return form will be given to the taxpayer on the basis of information we get about them from the tax deducted at source (TDS) procedure.

“That will also facilitate processing of returns in 24 hours and we have got an agreement (with the technology vendor operating the CPC 2.0) that if it (I-T return) is processed in one day, more amount will be given. We expect this system to be rolled out in 2 years. Faster processing of returns will increase better tax compliance,” Chandra said.