Taxpayers' charter will empower citizens to get time-bound services from I-T dept: CBDT chairman

The taxpayers' charter announced in the Budget will have a statutory status and it will "empower" citizens by ensuring time-bound services by the Income-Tax Department, the CBDT chief has said.

CBDT Chairman Pramod Chandra Mody said the charter will be notified very soon and once operationalised, India will be only the "third or fourth" country to have such a tax administration.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes frames policy for the I-T Department.

"The underlining theme with which we have been working till now is that we trust the taxpayers and from purely an enforcement agency, we are shifting our focus to being a service-oriented department," Mody said in an interview to the Press Trust of India.

"We are trying to promote voluntary compliance and in the process we are also trying to put some discipline on us that we are willing to provide you these services within a given time-frame and with certain benchmarks and it would be taxpayers right to expect those services," he said.

Earlier, Mody said, these services were part of an administrative mechanism by way of an existing citizens charter. "Now we are giving it a statutory recognition, once it is in the statute (in the law), it is enforceable."
"It (taxpayer charter) will be a great empowerment and great service to the taxpayer and incidentally this is not there in many tax jurisdictions."
Asked how much revenue is locked in these cases, the CBDT chairman said it's "few lakh crores."
"Based on that convenience, we took it to the next level. It (e-appeals) would be randomised and team-based and with the basic idea to increase transparency in trying to get some sort of uniformity and consistency or to say it would not lead to difference in approach on a particular issue."