I-T dept working on issuing e-PAN on real-time basis

The income tax department is working on a processing centre for the allotment of e-PAN on a real-time basis, Parliament was informed Monday.

"Real time PAN/TAN Processing Centre (RTPC) is being contemplated for future with the objective of allotment of e-PAN through Aadhaar based e-KYC on near to real time basis (in less than 10 minutes)," Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur said in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha.

He said the government has initiated or proposed to initiate projects to further improve the technology backbone of the Income Tax department which would result in enhanced time-bound services to the taxpayers in addition to increasing their voluntary compliance.

As part of this, the I-T department is working on a real-time PAN-TAN centre to further reduce the time required to allot PAN, particularly for the applicant's applying through 'Aadhaar-based e-KYC route by bringing suitable upgradation in the allotment processes and infrastructure.

Tax Deduction and Collection Account number (TAN) is a 10-digit alphanumeric number which every tax deductor is required to quote while making any tax payment to the Central Government.

Permanent Account Number (PAN) is a 10-digit alphanumeric code issued by the I-T department to uniquely identify tax payers.

Besides, the I-T department is also working on 'Project Insight' which which is an integrated data warehousing and business intelligence platform which is being rolled out in phased manner as it aims to strengthen non-intrusive information driven approach for improving compliance.

Further, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has directed that assessment proceedings are to be compulsorily conducted electronically through 'E-proceeding' during 2018-19 in all type of cases barring a few exceptions. "Steps are being taken to deepen this process this year," Thakur said.

The government has also approved Integrated E-filing and centralised Processing Centre (CPC) 2.0 Project which envisages pre-filling of ITRs by the I-T department and its acceptance by the taxpayer so as to improve accuracy of information contained in the return and drastically reduce the time time taken to process return and issue refunds.