CHENNAI: As part of its efforts to widen the tax base, the Income Tax, Chennai-I and II Central Excise and Chennai Customs Commissionerates, will open help centres to assist small tax payers to voluntarily pay the tax.

Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, the Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, Chennai, Binoy Gupta, said these help centres would start from July 1. The centres set up at the initiative of Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram would be operational for three months till September 30. After studying the response, a decision would be taken to make this a permanent facility.

In the jurisdiction of the CCIT in Chennai, six centres would function at the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Teynampet; Nadigar Sangam Building, Ambattur Industrial Estate Manufacturers' Association Hall, Ambattur, Usha Matriculation School, Tambaram, besides Chamber de Commerce, Pondicherry and Amuda Ganesh Mahal, Vellore.

Similar centres would be set up in Tiruchi, Coimbatore and Madurai. Dr. Gupta said the centres were a joint public-private effort to assist small taxpayers who have an annual income of Rs. 5 lakhs. It would be manned by Income Tax officers and equipped with computers and printers. The department officers would be assisted by those logistic providers to assist the small time taxpayers and help them fill the forms.

These centres, however, are not meant for corporate taxpayers or the salaried class. These centres would also not act as grievance cells.

J. Sridharan, Chief Commissioner of Central Excise, Chennai Zone, said the centres would primarily provide an institutional mechanism for guiding and educating the trade and industry in all matters relating to Central Excise, Customs and Service Tax. The centre would make the assessees aware of their rights and obligations and the advantage of tax compliance as also the non-compliance.

It would function between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. at the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Karumuttu Centre, First Floor, 634, Anna Salai, Chennai-35 and the Confederation of Indian Industry, Southern Region, 98/1, Velachery Main Road, Guindy, Chennai-32.

Murali Venkatraman, president of the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the chamber looked forward for a close association with the department in communicating the methods of compliance in an acceptable way.

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