Transparent Taxation – Honouring the Honest

On August 13, 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a platform for “Transparent Taxation – Honouring the Honest” that provides faceless assessment and appeal and taxpayers’ charter, as a part of direct tax reforms.
The objective of the platform is to ease the tax compliance and expediting refunds, benefiting honest taxpayers.
In this regard, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has carried out several major tax reforms in direct taxes in the recent years including:
- Reduction in Corporate Tax rates from 30% to 22% and for new manufacturing units the rates were reduced to 15%. Dividend distribution Tax was also abolished.
- With a view to provide for resolution of pending tax disputes the Direct Tax “Vivad se Vishwas Act, 2020” was rolled out.
- Document Identification Number (DIN) wherein every communication of the Department would carry a computer generated unique document identification number.
- To increase the ease of compliance for taxpayers, IT Department has moved forward with prefilling of income tax returns.
Due to continuous reforms, on the ease-of-doing-business front, India’s ranking had improved from 134th to 63rd position in 2019.