Troubled Turf
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman wants tax assessments to be digital and faceless, but the experience so far has been far from desirable
After giving a mighty push to the less cash economy, digital governance seems to be the next big thing on the current government's agenda, going by what Nirmala Sitharaman said in her Budget speech. The finance minister told Parliament "the existing system of (income tax) scrutiny involves a high level of personal interaction between the taxpayer and the tax department, which leads to certain undesirable practices on the part of tax officials. To eliminate such instances, a scheme of faceless assessment in electronic mode involving no human interface will be rolled out this year in a phased manner." Sitharaman never uttered the word 'corruption', but this might be her honest admission of how the IT Department had gone about its business
