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The government on Wednesday approved expenditure sanction of Rs 4,241.97crore for development of the next generation income tax filing and processing centre, which will help cut down time for processing of returns. IT major Infosys has been selected to implement the project after the bidding process, Union minister Piyush Goyal said while briefing reporters about the Cabinet decisions.
The Integrated E-filing & Centralized Processing Center 2.0 project of the income tax department will help in faster processing of returns and issue of refunds to taxpayer’s bank account directly without any interface with the department.
Goyal said the processing time at present for Income Tax Return (ITR) is 63 days and it will come down to one day after implementation of the project. The project is expected to be completed in 18 months and will be launched after three months of testing.
The e-filing and the CPC projects have enabled end-to-end automation of all processes to provide taxpayer services and to promote voluntary compliance.
“This approval has significant benefits for the department and taxpayers through various functionalities such as pre-filling of ITR and acceptance by taxpayer as a means to improve accuracy and to reduce refund/processing turnaround time drastically, facilitation to taxpayers in resolving outstanding tax demands; integrated contact centers for taxpayer assistance and tax payer outreach program through digital media and employer/ partner accreditation program to bring significant enhancement in services to taxpayers,” the government said in a statement.
The Cabinet also sanctioned a consolidated cost of Rs 1,482.44 crore for the existing CPC-ITR 1.0 project up to 2018-19. Goyal said that tax refunds worth Rs 1.83 lakh crore have been issued so far in the current fiscal by the CPC.
