Government Expands Mandate Of Direct Tax Code Panel

The government has expanded the terms of reference of the task force formed to review direct tax laws and has inducted a new member.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes has included five more areas where the panel headed by Akhilesh Ranjan would look into, according to an official order.

The terms of reference of the panel have been broadened to include:

• The faceless and anonymised verification, scrutiny or assessment process.
• The mechanism for system-based cross verification of financial transactions.
• Reduction in litigation and expeditious disposal of appeals before the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals), Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, High Courts and Supreme Court.
• Reduction of compliance burden by simplification of procedures.
• Sharing of information between Goods and Service Tax, customs, CBDT and Financial Intelligence Unit.

Since the terms of reference of the panel have been broadened to include sharing of data among agencies, the government has appointed Joint Secretary of the Department of Revenue Ritvik Pandey as a member of the task force.

When the task force was constituted, the terms of reference of the panel was to draft direct tax legislation keeping in view the direct tax system prevalent in various countries, international best practices, and economic needs of the country.

The government has also nominated Chief Economic Adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian as a special invitee to the panel, which was due since he took charge as the CEA.

The task force has to submit its report by July 31, and other members on the panel include Girish Ahuja, Rajiv Memani, Mukesh Patel, Mansi Kedia and GC Srivastava.