Arun Jaitley launches E-Sahyog and PAN camps

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday launched E-Sahyog and PAN camps, both initiatives of the Income Tax Department, to improve services, and said that it will help in questioning the transactions within the system which do not get reflected in the tax returns.

"Eventually the idea is to capture some part of transactions within the system, so that if those don't get reflected in the tax returns, questions can be asked," Jaitley told the media here.

"The object of the income tax department is to make life as easy as possible for assessee and difficult only for those who consciously evade and avoid. The fact that as of 5.5 crore assessee, there are already 23 crore PAN Card holders and this number is going to increase, I am quiet sure that as camps increase, just we had success of some other schemes of the government, this will increase significantly,"Jaitley said.

Jaitley further said that a committee has been constituted to simplify the provisions of Income Tax Act.

"The idea is to make Income tax Act also simpler. We have last few months being resolving past issues. We have constituted a committee to simplify the provisions of Income Tax Act. The Committee would be headed by Justice Ishwar," he added.

The PAN camps are aimed at expanding the coverage of number of people through the Permanent Account Number.