NEW DELHI: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has rapped the Ministry of Finance for the tardy progress in computerisation and the lack of information technology application in scrutiny and monitoring by its departments.

It has asked the Government to come out with a White Paper on the use of IT in the recently implemented Value Added Tax (VAT) regime as also other Central taxes to widen the tax net further and raise more revenue. The panel has also advised the Government to enhance the use of this modern technology in the monitoring and scrutiny of income tax returns to render the system foolproof.

"The committee desires that the Government come out with a White Paper on IT in tax administration that will provide a comprehensive overview of what is being done and what is proposed to be done to use IT in the tax administration covering Central Board of Direct Taxes and Central Board of Excise and Customs and VAT as well," the panel, headed by the former Transport Minister, B.C. Khanduri, said in its 17th report tabled in Parliament this week.

Lags behind

The committee also regretted that despite the country's known prowess in IT planning and software development, utilisation of this technology lagged behind in both the CBDT and the CBEC and accordingly, the two boards suffered from lack of clarity and coordination. The end result is that there is no coordination between the various tax departments.

The main reason for this, it says, is the fact that the Government's effort towards computerisation of the entire tax administration machinery appears to have been undertaken in a piecemeal and casual manner. Pulling up the authorities for this casual approach, the committee said: "The Government should view the process of computerisation in a holistic manner with a centralised supervisor to monitor formulation and execution of various computerisation projects... This should be done within a specified time-frame."

The committee has further observed that the main problem arose from the delays in sanctioning the computerisation projects. The delays in the completion of tenders led to further delay and the funds allocated for the purpose are either not spent at the end of the year or drastically reduced in the revised estimates (RE) of the budget.

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