Well Ravi! The most critical requirement for improving the tax-compliance is to have a tax regime where the compliance is easy, transparent, painless and non-compliance is risky and costly. The Tax Department is inundated with truckloads of documents that the taxpayers file and the inefficiencies associated with handling this paper mountain can become a breeding ground for tax evasion.
In the year 2003, Income Tax Department (ITD) embarked on an initiative for modernization of the current system for collection, processing, monitoring and accounting of direct taxes using modern technology. Such modernization is expected to enhance convenience in record-keeping and return-preparation by the deductors, reduce cost of compliance thus improving overall taxcompliance. This will also reduce leakage, increase tax-base, improve process efficiency & transparency, enable speedy reconciliation, enable faster transfer of tax collected to government coffers and facilitate data mining to identify trends and making projections.
The Concept
Tax Information Network (TIN) is a part of this modernization initiative by ITD. TIN has three key sub-systems:
_ Electronic Return Acceptance and Consolidation System (ERACS) which consists of an infrastructure for interface with the taxpayers (a nation-wide network of TIN-Facilitation Centres and a web-based utility) for receipt and upload of TDS (Tax Deducted at Source), TCS (TAX Collected at Source) and AIR (Annual Information Return) to the central system of TIN;
_ Online Tax Administration System (OLTAS) for daily upload to the central system, the details of tax deposited in various tax-collecting bank branches across the country;
_ Central PAN Ledger Generation System (CPLGS) which is the central system that generates a ledger for each PAN (Permanent Account Number) and consist of:
• Details of tax deducted (TDS/TCS) which is generated by matching the TDS/TCS returns submitted by the deductors/ collectors with the tax deposit (challan) information from the banks;
• Details of the tax deposited (advance tax/ self-assessment tax) directly by the taxpayer with the bank;
• Details of major expenditure by the PAN holder from the AIR filed by specified entities are also mapped to the PAN.
Information collected from www.nseindia.com
Answered by
Kumaar
at
5:42 PM on October 27, 2008
