From Opinions Desk
The Government of India has framed new rules for ITR filing with the aim of simplifying the process and using less complicated system of form. Now, most of the filing has to be digital, the exceptions being senior citizens above 80 years of age. Changes have been made in the ITR assessment as well. There are strong measures against financial cybercrimes.
The government has placed the draft proposal online on its income tax department website and has invited comments from the public. They are expected to give comments along the following categories –
- Simplification of Language
- Reduction of Litigation
- Reduction of Compliance Burden
- Identification of Redundant/Obsolete Rules and Forms
The respondents can fill in their name and mobile number and verify by the OTP and give their comments.
As to how far the new rules shall bring changes in the complexity of ITR filing, remains to be seen in future.
In the previous years, it has been noticed that there was no pattern in whose forms were assessed first and whose forms were assessed later. Thus, many of those who filed as soon as the forms were available, had to wait for months to get their refund. On the other had, many who filed a month before the deadline, received their refund soon. There was also no correlation in the amount and the timeline of refund. Many whose refund was below 50 thousand had to wait for months, while those with a higher amount of refund got their refund earlier. Further many people had no clarity about which form they had to fill in. Those who traded only small amounts on the stock market and even if they lost money, had to wait for many months to get their refund. This was only because the ITR officials processed the stock market traded funds’ forms later. But this was not clarified earlier. The result was that now many small traders are wary of going for short term trading on the stock market.
There seemed to be an absolute chaos in getting the ITR refund in the previous years.
From the above, it would be prudent of the government to –
- Make it absolutely clear who should fill in which form.
- Alternatively, the government can keep a single, simplified form for all and let everyone fill in this universal form their earnings, expenditures, final profit/loss under different columns.
- Further, the processing of forms should be on first come, first served basis, regardless of the refund amoun and the category of filers.
- There should be different teams to handle different categories of refund amounts and these teams can work simultaneously.
- AI is only as good as it is trained. Hence, AI must be trained and tested well before being implemented.
By implementing these simple steps the ITR filing can be much better simplified.
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