Filing I-T returns online? Government may want your feedback

NEW DELHI: Now, when you file your income-tax returns online, you may get an opportunity to rate whether the process was simple and whether it was difficult to get a refund.

The government is working on a template which would require taxpayers to mandatorily give their feedback. The move comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s interaction with joint secretary and additional secretary-level officials in August. During the interaction, an official — citing Mauritius as an example — elaborated on the need to hold a taxpayer satisfaction survey along with the filing of income-tax returns.

According to one of the officials, the PM welcomed this and even suggested that such surveys should be extended to all online services being provided by the government.

Following this, the finance ministry has been directed to work on this. A senior official said: "This does not involve huge costs. It just requires a small change at the technical end. Every taxpayer would have to just rate on a scale of five the overall satisfaction." This would then be extended to all taxation services being provided online.

Last year, the Central Board of Excise and Customs ( CBEC) had conducted a satisfaction survey in association with Ficci and KPMG.

With a sample size of about 45,000, the survey sought feedback on reforms undertaken by the department in the last two years. The questionnaire centred on four themes — interaction experience with senior and junior functionaries of the department, dispute resolution, information technology-enabled services, refund claims and evaluation of sectoral reforms.

The responses showed that 45 per cent of the respondents saw an attitudinal change in senior functionaries (commissioner level and above) and 51 per cent acknowledged an improvement at the ground level (inspectors and above).

Meanwhile, the Centre is also planning to merge all revenue sources under one authority so that cross-sharing of information becomes easier and an alert is sounded if a defaulter comes up on any system. For this, a firm may be appointed to understand the benefits and the way forward.

ET View: A Good Idea
Taxpayer feedback is a good idea to assess the performance and improve the country’s tax administration. The goal for the government should be to let a taxpayer know her dues. An IT empowered government should also make creative use of technology to track evasion, now that the goods and services tax which creates audit trails has been rolled out, and would help identify the potential base both in indirect and direct taxes.