Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday launched a “Transparent Taxation — Honouring the Honest” platform that provides faceless assessment and appeal and taxpayers’ charter. He appealed to those not paying taxes despite the capability to come forward and commit themselves to the cause of making the country self-reliant.

Hailing it as a “new milestone” in the ongoing process of structural reforms, he announced that the faceless assessment and taxpayers’ charter would be implemented from Thursday itself. The faceless appeal system would be available from September 25, birth anniversary of Deendayal Upadhyaya.

Mr. Modi asserted that the platform would instil a sense of fairness and fearlessness in the taxpayers. “In the past six years, our focus has been banking the unbanked, securing the unsecured and funding the unfunded. From today, we have embarked on a new journey: honouring the honest,” he said.

The honest taxpayers contributed immensely to the national development, he pointed out. When the taxpayers’ life became simple, they progressed and so did the nation. The new facilities were in consonance with, and further strengthened, the government’s motto of ‘minimum government’, ‘maximum governance’, he noted.

The government had adopted people-centric approach towards making laws, rules and policies. “This is an experiment of the New India’s new governance model and the country is getting positive results. Everyone has now realised that short-cuts are not acceptable, and it is not wise to adopt wrong means,” he said, adding that sense of duty was now the most appreciated approach.

The change had come about due to four reasons - narrowing the grey areas of discretion; having faith in the general public; limiting human interface in the system of governance by use of technology; and awarding efficiency, integrity and sensitivity in the bureaucracy. He described them as policy-driven governance.

Continuous reforms

The government’s approach was the proactive introduction of policy-based holistic reforms, which would become the basis of further reforms. In the past few years, over 1,500 laws had been rescinded. Owing to continuous reforms, on the ease-of-doing-business front, India’s ranking had improved from 134th to 63rd position.

The commitment towards reforms had also instilled confidence in foreign investors and this was the reason why, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, the country received record FDI, he observed.

In the previous system, income-tax notices had become an instrument for harassing taxpayers. It could help expand the taxpayer base and rather created conditions for the business of ‘black and white’ [money] to flourish. “Complexity makes compliance difficult. To simply the system, GST replaced several several taxes, the system of filing returns and refunds has been made completely online,” he said.

Disputes

The new income tax slab system did not need unnecessary documents. Earlier, the government would take the disputes involving over ₹10 lakh to courts. However, the limit had now been fixed to ₹1 crore in the High Court and ₹2 crore in the Supreme Court. Schemes like ‘Vivad Se Vishwas’ have helped in dispute settlements. More than three lakh cases had been resolved out of court.

The income tax had also been reduced. “We are among the countries with the least corporate tax. Our effort has been to make the tax system seamless, painless and faceless,” he stated.

In the new system, with the help of technology, the cases of scrutiny could now be allocated randomly to any official in any part of the country. The review of orders would also be done by another team at some other place, chosen randomly through computer. The department would also escape unnecessary litigation and officials would get reprieve from the energy otherwise spent on transfers and postings.

On the taxpayers’ charter, Mr. Modi said it was also a vital step in the country’s development, in terms of bringing about a balance between the responsibilities and the duties of taxpayers and also fixing the responsibilities of the government.

Although the taxpayer base had expanded by 2.5 crore in the past six-seven years, it was a matter of grave concern that only about 1.5 crore people were paying income tax in a country of over 130-crore population. “Self-introspection is necessary for a self-reliant India,” he added.