I-T Dept walks away with PM's award for easy tax compliance

The Income Tax Department was today awarded 'Prime Minister's award for excellence in Public Administration' for 'Easy Tax Compliance through Quality Service'.
The award was presented to the department by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the occasion of Civil Services day.
"The award is a recognition of the sustained efforts of officers of the Income Tax Department. Four e-service projects of the department have already been conferred national e-governance awards," the Finance Ministry said.
The award has been conferred for setting up and successful implementation of end-to-end solution of core services, it said.
These include integrated e-governance initiatives -- Tax Information Network (TIN), the e-filing portal, Centralised Processing Cell (CPC-TDS) for processing of TDS statements, Centralised Processing Centre(CPC) for processing of income tax returns and the Refund Banker.

"The solution architecture and the reconciliation processes are one of the best in the world," it added.

Currently, over 4.5 crore taxpayers and 15 lakh deductors are using various e-enabled online taxpayer friendly end-to-end services -- e-payment of taxes, e-filing of tax returns and TDS statements, tax credit statements in Form 26AS, digital TDS certificates in Form 16/16A and issuance of refunds.
In 2014-15, more than 94 per cent of the tax returns were filed online.
Besides, about 99 per cent of the TDS statements are being filed electronically.
While the TDS statements are processed within a week, the tax returns are being processed within an average period of 30 days.

The ministry further said a large number of tax refunds are being directly credited to the bank accounts of the taxpayers.
The award and the four national e-governance awards "demonstrate the commitment" of the department to achieving "minimum government and maximum governance" in tax administration and moving towards a non-adversarial and tax-payer friendly regime.