{"id":121809,"date":"2021-07-28T20:47:31","date_gmt":"2021-07-28T15:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=121809"},"modified":"2021-07-28T20:47:31","modified_gmt":"2021-07-28T15:17:31","slug":"towards-a-lean-tax-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/towards-a-lean-tax-department\/","title":{"rendered":"Towards a lean tax department"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.business-standard.com\/article\/opinion\/towards-a-lean-tax-department-121072701781_1.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Business Standard<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Relevance<\/strong>: Filling of vacancies is not necessary always. Technology can ensure that a high operational efficiency is maintained even with a lean workforce.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Synopsis<\/strong>: Worries about vacant positions in the Income Tax (IT) department and their impact on tax collection may be misplaced in a world of technological disruptions.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>Background<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>As per news reports, almost 80% of the posts of chief commissioners in the income tax department\u00a0have been lying vacant for several months. Some of the vacancies had not been filled for as long as about a year.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Against 91 approved positions of chief commissioners, only 18 had been filled.<\/li>\n<li>The total number of vacancies at the level of commissioners and above was about 400.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>Performance of IT department<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>If one looks at the following factors, it becomes clear that filling the vacancies is not needed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>No adverse impact on Direct tax collection<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Due to the pandemic in 2020-21, direct tax revenues collected saw a contraction of about 10% last year.<\/li>\n<li>In 2019-20, when there was no pandemic and the income tax department presumably did not suffer from large-scale vacancies, collections of direct taxes had dropped by close to 9% over those in 2018-19.<\/li>\n<li>Direct tax collections, net of refunds, in April-June 2021 were 43% higher than those in the same quarter of 2020.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>Use of technology<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>The government has introduced technology in a big way to reduce the extent of physical interface with taxpayers.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Faceless scrutiny and assessments<\/strong> can be completed much faster, with fewer people, with the use of technology.<\/li>\n<li>The preliminary processing of tax returns is already undertaken with the help of technology.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Also, globally, there has been a trend of reducing the number of officials employed by the direct taxes department.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>Way forward<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>Instead of filling vacancies finance ministry should refocus its energies appropriately on other aspects of tax collection and administration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Business Standard Relevance: Filling of vacancies is not necessary always. Technology can ensure that a high operational efficiency is maintained even with a lean workforce. Synopsis: Worries about vacant positions in the Income Tax (IT) department and their impact on tax collection may be misplaced in a world of technological disruptions. Background As per&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/towards-a-lean-tax-department\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Towards a lean tax department<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,91],"class_list":["post-121809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-tax","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}