- Modi said-“ try to make income tax system faceless, seamless and painless”
- ‘Taxpayers will not be doubted unnecessarily, officers will have to trust taxpayers’
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday launched Transparent Taxation, Honoring the Honor (Transparent Taxation – Honoring the Honest), a new platform for the country’s honest taxpayers. He said it included 3 major reforms – Faceless Assessment, Taxpayer Charter and Faceless Appeal. The first two have come into effect from August 13, while the system of faceless appeal will come into effect from September 25, i.e., Deendayal Upadhyay’s birthday.
Faceless Assessment:The income tax officer of the city in which you are filing the return will not see your case, but computerized process will allot the case to any officer across the country. With this, the income tax officials will not be able to harass taxpayers unnecessarily.
Taxpayer Charter :The aim is to reduce the problems of taxpayers and fix accountability of officers so that honest taxpayers get respect and their grievances get resolved on time.
Fearless Appeal: If thetaxpayer has any objection about the process after receiving the notice, he can appeal. This will also be a faceless process, that is, both the appeals and the officer to whom the appeals reach will remain unknown to each other.
Emphasis on making the policy People Centric
Modi said that, “the new facilities starting today are also a big step towards reducing the interference of the government from the lives of the countrymen. Today, every rule of law, every policy is removed from the process and power centric approach and it is being emphasized to make it people centric and public friendly. The country is also getting good results for this. Today everyone has realized that short cut is not right”.
Over 1500 laws abolished,
Modi said that, “there was a time when there was a lot of talk of reform, decisions taken under pressure were also called reforms. Now this thinking and approach has changed. Reform for us means that these should be policy based, not in pieces and one reform should be the basis of another reform. It is not that we once stopped to reform. Over 1,500 laws have been abolished in the last few years. A few years ago India was at number 134 in Ease of Doing, now at number 63. There are many reforms behind this”.
Foreign investors’ confidence increased
According to the Prime Minister, the confidence of foreign investors in the country is constantly increasing. Record FDI in India is also an example of this in the times of Corona. Fundamental reform was needed in India’s tax system because it was created during the period of slavery and gradually developed. There were small changes after independence but the structure remained the same. As a result, honest taxpayers were also put in the dock.
This may come as a beneficial change for many middle class families who have to deal with corruption in such areas. This move may also please the middle class who have regularly paid taxes, but in the times of corona were left way behind.