In India, technology is being used to detect tax evaders, government is alsoplanning to investigate transactions with regard to PAN disclosures. Witheverything related to tax is being linked to PAN cards, it has become mucheasier and even more necessary to use technology for the purposes of easierprocessing and better transparency and tax avoidance measures.With the coming of Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, every stage ofbusiness transactions is going to get recorded. Detecting violations will beeasier for the taxmen. Some of the early adopters of technology have been Central Board of DirectTaxes and the Central Board of Excise and Customs.
Both of these departmentshave specific directions in dealing with computer-related initiatives and theyhave been benefitted enormously in terms of improved tax compliance, betterprocessing and an increase in taxpayer satisfaction. The CBDT and the CBEC havealso initiated data warehousing and Business Intelligence projects to identifyand plug leakages. Income Tax Department have implemented systems to facilitate e-filing ande-processing of income tax returns by the CPC. Now the taxpayers do not need tostand in a queue to obtain stamped acknowledgements for return-filing from theTax Department camps. The TDS records are now aligned and taxpayers are madeaware of the credits they will be receiving even before filing their returns.
With the implementation of Centralized Processing System (CPC), the tax refundprocessing system, along with many other things, has been automated. Manytaxpayers are surprised at times to find their bank accounts credited withrefunds much before their expectations. Furthermore, the Tax Department alsosends real time updates through SMS and e-mail facilities to maintaintransparency and interaction with the taxpayers.However, while technology continues to play an important role intransforming and improving the operations of the Indian Tax administration, thedepartment has a long-term plan to harness it for the benefit of the revenueand taxpayers.