The Government has introduced a transparent reform in the area of taxation. According to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, fundamental reforms are needed in the Indian tax system as the number of taxpayers in the country is less compared to the total population.
Honest taxpayers of the country play a crucial role in nation-building. To ease the compliance and to protect the interest of the honest taxpayers the Prime Minister on 13th August 2020 has set up a platform for transparent taxation. Features of this new taxation policy are faceless assessment, faceless appeal, and taxpayer charter.
The faceless assessment aims to remove the interface between the income tax department and the taxpayers. Because of this, it will not be required for the taxpayers to visit the income tax office or the officer. This is indeed an advantage for taxpayers. Under faceless appeal, an appeal will be randomly allotted to any officer in the country. The identity of the officer who will be deciding the appeal will remain unknown. This new system says that intrusive and survey action shall be done only by the investigating wing and TDS wing only after the approval by officers of the level of Chief Commissioner or above and the survey shall not by the field officers. The taxpayer Charter gives an outline of the rights and responsibilities of both tax officers and taxpayers.
According to Narendra Modi, there are mainly four factors that are responsible for the transformation in the taxation system and they are the use of advanced technology, efficiency in the bureaucracy, policy-driven governance, and belief in people’s honesty. The government from this tax reform wants to make sure that the tax administration should work to solve the problem instead of engaging every taxpayer. This is an evolved process where is benefits the taxpayers of the country by ensuring that they are an easy tax process they need not visit the tax office every time.
Narendra Modi applauded the honest taxpayers and further said that there will be a great development in the country when the life of honest taxpayers is made easy. The intention of the Prime Minister to bring this reformation in the Indian Tax System is to make the entire tax system public-friendly and people-centric from process-centric and power-centric.
