THE OLD SETTLERS OF SIKKIM

Income Tax department working on strategy to prevent corruption

NEW DELHI: The Income Tax Department is working on a comprehensive strategy to deal with corruption within the organisation.

The work relating to identification of potential areas of corruption related to the organisational activities and development of an action plan for its mitigation has commenced, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said.

"The action plan is likely to be finalised by December 10, 2012," the Results-Framework Document (RFD) for 2012-13 of the Board said.

CBDT is the statutory authority functioning under the Central Board of Revenue Act, 1963. The officials of the Board also functions as a Division of the Ministry of Finance, dealing with matters relating to levy and collection of direct taxes.

The RFD further said that "for financial year 2012-13, the department is concentrating on providing better taxpayer's services with the view to enhance voluntary compliance".

The Board, it said, has carefully reviewed its priorities with a view to sharpen the different mechanism for achieving effective and meaningful implementation of taxpayer services that will also facilitate voluntary compliance for the department.

Efforts of the Board are on reducing the compliance costs of the taxpayers, and intend to focus on better communication with taxpayers, development of human resources in the department and strengthening IT enabled services, the document added.

To achieve its objectives, the CBDT plans to fill up the existing vacancies in the department in a phased manner, provide proper training and educating taxpayers.

The direct tax collection target for 2012-13 fiscal is Rs 5.70 lakh crore. The direct tax mop in the previous fiscal was about Rs 4.93 lakh crore (provisional estimates).