Efforts on to streamline scrutiny process of I-T cases: Govt

As part of government's efforts to create business friendly tax environment in the country, the Centre will soon come out with guidelines to streamline the process of scrutiny of income tax cases, a top official said today.
Revenue Secretary Shaktikanta Das said the Finance Ministry is closely working on methods to streamline the process of scrutiny.
"Very shortly, the government will come out with certain guidelines and certain methods of streamlining this process of scrutiny cases (and) make it as non-intrusive as possible. Efforts are on," Das said here at an Assocham event.
"A point was made (by Assocham) to stop hounding the big tax payers...In income tax we pick up less than 1 per cent of the cases for scrutiny. We get about 4 crore IT returns of both individuals and corporates...Roughly 3-3.5 lakh cases are picked up for scrutiny which is less than 1 per cent," Das said.

He said that efforts are on to streamline procedures to make them business friendly tax environment, which encourages honest taxpayers, promotes business and contributes to growth.
"The scrutiny is on certain identified pre-determined criteria. A point has been made to us that some assesses get scrutinised year after year why should that happen. We are examining these aspects.

"We are going to come out with detailed guidelines, if someone has been scrutinised for one year two year there is no point in going on with this endless process," he said.
"Why it is happening today because it is computer determined and when you put in parameters like cash transaction, foreign visits exceeding so much, naturally you get scrutinised every year," Das added.

So far income tax, service tax and central excise investigations are concerned, these are completed in a very time-bound manner, he said.
"We just do not believe in dragging on because government is also interested in getting the revenue out of it. There is a timeline, long pending investigations are monitored by both the boards," the Revenue Secretary said.
Further, he said the ministry's effort is to remove tax uncertainty and ambiguity and to bring about simplification.
"Government is alive to improving ease of doing business. Whole procedure of issuance of PAN has been streamlined," he said.
On corporate tax rate, he said it will be brought down to 25 per cent in four years and the roadmap for exemptions will be put up in public domain and suggestions would be invited from stakeholders.