[Fsf-friends] IT in IT

Mahesh T Pai paivakil at vsnl.net
Tue, 05 Nov 2002 02:15:34 +0530


Hi!! all!!!

This is one is about Information Technology in Income Tax.

The central government has sought comments on reforms in direct and 
indirect tax administration. It is there at http://finmin.nic.in/.

But, IT (that is, information technology) is going to be more 
pervasive in tax administration. See:-

http://finmin.nic.in/kelkar/report.pdf
and
http://finmin.nic.in/kelkar/Full_Report.pdf
Most of you can ignore the reports themselves, there is nothing about 
choice of s/w in these reports, except a recommendation that use of 
Information Technology should be made more pervasive - and for 
business nosed amongst you, there is a recommendaiton that data entry 
should be farmed out.

I believe that online presentation of tax returns and payment will 
become feasible. I think that this is the ripe time to put up a strong 
opinion that such procedures should be based on free s/w.

However, in light of experiences in some countries, where IT (Income 
Tax) transactions were not accepted on line when the client / user 
system was non-proprietary, I think we should make a short submission 
on the issue.  Already, the Income Tax department's web pages are 
based on ASP - active server pages, as I gather from the link addresses.

Any body has more info and experiences to share with us about online 
transactions?

I suggest that we put put up a short submission, - some 500 words will 
do, based on feed back from the community.

Regards,
Mahesh T Pai.