Project information
| Status | Finalist |
| URL | Go to website |
| Category | Public Administration Citizen inclusion - influence on governance |
| Country | India |
| Operational areas | Urban |
| Target groups | Youth, Women, Men, Seniors |
| Fixed connection | Dialup, DSL |
| Wireless connection | WiFi NA |
| Access points | Government office, Business, Home |
| Interact | Landline Phone, Desktop Computer, Laptop , N/A |
| Software License Types | Open Source |
Project location
Random images Challenge 2008
Project MONITOR: The Backend Software of Service Tax Commissionerate, Delhi Website in India
- Brief description
Project MONITOR is the backend software of the Service Tax Commissionerate Delhi website www.servicetaxdelhi.gov.in to provide online replies to the queries of the service tax matters, publication of the latest news for the different stakeholders of the service tax in India, discuss complex legal issues online, update the taxpayers of the latest development of service tax and captures the important data of the Service Tax Assessees and Service Tax return to facilitate database search, analysis & scrutiny of Service Tax Return and to check the revenue leakage by effective, audit and anti-evasion.
- Vision, Objectives and Goals
Internet, though an extremely potent tool today, is still evolving. In the recent years, the websites facilitating the interactions between the people have become extremely popular. People are talking to each other, discussing complex issues and seeking the help of the experts to solve their problems online.
Time magazine awarded the “Person of the Year” in 2006 to none other than “You” i.e. the people of the world. The world is gradually recognizing that it is the people who are changing the world not by conflict, not by diplomacy but by discussing the matter with each other on one to one basis. The popularity of the websites dealing with participatory role of the people can be assessed from the simple fact that six out of top ten websites of the world namely YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, Wikipedia, Hi5 and Orkut are based on the concept of people’s participation and interaction with each other.
However the e-government projects have still to develop applications to increase the participations of the people in solving their problems by online participation. Government websites still use information technology for the publication of the information on the website, automation of the processes and carrying out online transaction. The Service Tax Commissionerate, Delhi sought to reinvent governance using the latest trends in the technological revolutions of the internet to provide good government to the tax payers in India by developing the application using the latest trends of the web applications which enabled the department to make the best use of the information technology and the optimum use of the limited human resources. .
Service Tax was introduced in 1994 in India. The Service providers are required to register with the Department by filling up a ST-1 (paper) form, on the basis of which a registration certificate (ST-2) is granted. The service providers are required to calculate their tax liability themselves and deposit the taxes in the designated bank on monthly/quarterly basis. They are required to submit a simple Service Tax return (ST-3) on six-monthly interval. The ST-3 return provides the information related to service provided, service received , duty payment, etc. The Service Tax department scrutinizes the ST-3 returns and also do audit of the selected assessees to ensure the tax compliance. The Commissionerate of Service Tax, New Delhi is the second largest revenue earning Service Tax Commissionerate in India. In the year 2006-07, the revenue collected by this Commissionerate was around INR 57 billion and the revenue expected in the current financial year is INR 80 billion. There are more than 100,000 registered assessees in the Commissionerate. The service tax revenue has a large potential to grow in India as service sector constitute almost 60% of its GDP. In last few years the service tax revenue had been rising by almost 60 percent per annum. The expected growth of service tax in the current financial year 2007-08 is 40%. The Service Tax Commissionerate faced following challenges.- It has less than 200 officers for collection of taxes from more than 100,000 assessees, which is almost 20 times more than the number of assessees that are handled in a normal Commissionerate
- All records and returns filed with the department are still in the paper form
- There were frequent complaints from taxpayers like the delay in granting the service tax registration certificate to the assessees, which is essential for payment of service tax.
- The scrutiny of the tax returns, needed the revenue data of the assessees for the previous years and various information like the cases booked against the assessee, the trend of revenue for the service and the revenue paid by the assessee in the previous years. These information being available in files are not readily available to the officers.
- Only a small number of units could be audited due to shortage of the staff in the audit section. Hence high risk units has to be identified for maximization of the effect of audit.
- Since service tax is a new levy and most of the assessees are brought in the service tax levy for the first time, a large number of doubts and queries were raised by the assesses. The procedure for replying the query was complicated, bureaucratic and time taking that used to cause delays and dissatisfaction to the tax payers
- There was a big IT project being implemented by the Government of India costing more than INR 8 billion. However the successful implementation of the project was to take more than 2 years.
- The financial power of the Commissioner of Service Tax for software development was only INR 50,000 (US$ 1200) per year.
- There was no hope for substantially increasing the manpower in the Commissionerate or improving the IT infrastructure in the recent future. The objective of the project MONITOR and the service tax website was to reduce the physical interaction between the tax payers and the government official and to provide an alternative platform for information supply and grievance redressal to the assessees. A database was needed to capture the essential information of the assessee and the tax return to assist the tax officials in effective and targeted scrutiny of the return, select high-risk units for audit so as to cause minimum inconvenience to the genuine assessee yet effective to check the evasion of taxes. The ultimate goal of the project was to collect the taxes efficiently and effectively using the existing manpower and the use of information technology to provide best possible service to the tax payer while maximizing the revenue to the government.
- How does ICT contribute to the organisational objectives
- The Commissionerate started the website of the Commissionerate www.servicetaxdelhi.gov.in in October 2006. The website published the much needed rules, laws and procedures of the service tax in India. It also provided the contact numbers of the senior service tax officials who can be contacted on phone or email in case of any difficulty. The website also has the feature of online tracking of the registration status of the assessee based on the PAN number or name of the assessee. The project MONITOR (Management of ONline Information & Trends Of Revenue) provided a robust database for the backend operations for the officers and the taxpayers. The project was fully implemented by July-September 2007 after testing and security audit. MONITOR captures the important data of the registration (ST-1) and Service Tax return (ST-3) for search, analysis, scrutiny, audit and anti-evasion. It also has the modules for discussion forum, online query submission and publication of the news for the tax payers. The Service Tax Commissionerate Delhi used the concept of the immensely popular “discussion forum” in the realm of government perhaps for the first time in the world. All the utilities of the MONITOR are designed to be…..and user-friendly that requires least training of the officers. It uses the optimization of data and requires minimum fields for data entry.
Technology was extensively used in the designing of the website and the back-end operations. All the features of the website were designed as dynamic modules so that the uploading can take place from any place/anytime by the authorized person. The security audit of the website was done to ensure that it is not hacked or used by the unauthorized persons.
- Transferability
All utilities of the website and MONITOR can easily be replicated in any other government department. It is being implemented in many service tax Commissionerates with minor modifications. Its replication in other government departments is also possible with minor modifications. Some features like News, Discussion Forum, and Message Board can easily be replicated without much change.
- Project summary
- The ongoing activities of the project are as following:-
1. Service Tax Discussion Forum: This forum is designed to provide the replies of the queries of the tax payers online by the help of experts appointed by the department from the government as well as from other sectors. The concept involved the registration of “Service Tax Experts” online. The tax payers can ask any question online which are answered by one or more experts. Thus the citizen receives unbiased and legally correct replies from the experts almost immediately. In order to ensure timely replies to the queries, the service tax officers were allotted duties to ensure that all questions are answered on the same day. Thus the assessee instead of waiting for days to get the reply gets the answer within hours of its submission on the website and that too free of cost.
2. In the News: Service tax being a new levy is in the process of evolution. The interpretation of the Service Tax Law is often changed due to the judgments of the Courts/Tribunals and the notifications, circulars, trade notices and clarifications issued by government. However, these changes are not available to the ordinary tax payers. The private websites often provide this information in their paid section of their website. “In the News” feature of the website provides the latest news, trade notices, Circulars and information of the Commissionerate and the Service Tax Department, on the website. The innovative feature of the “In the News” is the provision to attach documents like Trade Notices, judgments that can be downloaded by the taxpayers on their computers.
3. Message Board: There are many communications within the departments, like alerts, internal correspondences, modus opentii-circulars which are meant only for the officers of the department. The common method to send these communications is in the form of letters by post, fax or special messengers. These methods are expensive and time consuming. The Message Board feature of MONITOR allows the officers to upload the important letters for the field formations, within the Commissionerate. As soon as the officer logs in, he get to see the latest messages and letters of the Commissionerate. He can download these letters and post the replies too on the message board. The message board too has the provision for attachment of documents and files. It allows dynamic uploading from anywhere, anytime
4. Feeding of data of the assesses and tax returns: This features enables the concerned officer to feed the “key data” (less than one-tenth of the total data in a return) selected on the basis of experience and expertise of the officers that are most crucial for the decision-making by the officers.
5. Top Assessees Information: Almost 80% of the service tax revenue of the Commissionerate comes from less than 100 top assesses. Hence the department needs to focus its attention on the top taxpayer for optimum utilization of its resources. This feature of the MONITOR provides revenue data for the top 10, 20, 50 or all Assessees of the Commissionerate. The revenue data for each assessee is accessible for Cash, Cenvat & Total revenue for the current and previous financial years. The data can be drilled down to the level of Month, Division and Range.
6. Top Services Information: Even though, there are 100 services in the service tax, yet more than 90% of the revenue comes from less than 20 services. Hence, focus on the top services is needed for optimum utilization of the government resources. This feature of MONITOR provides revenue figure for top 10, 20, 50 or all services of the Commissionerate. The report provides information of the number of assesses in each category and provides a hyperlink for details. By clicking the hyperlink, the officer can see the revenue details of the top assessee of the specified service. This feature also provide the trend of revenue, the gain/loss of revenue in actual as well as on percentage term for each service.
7. Revenue Summery Report: The revenue report of the Commissionerate is the most critical report of the Commissionerate to evaluate its performance. This report is critical in analyzing the macro- trend of revenue to take strategic policy decisions by the government and the Commissionerate. MONITOR generates the revenue report automatically and provides the divisions wise break up of revenue. The service tax revenue is available in three categories i.e. Cash, Cenvat and Total Revenue. The report provides the trends of revenue including revenue realized in the current/previous year, target/moving target, gain/loss of revenue in real and percentage term as compared to last year figure as well as in respect to target.
8. Scrutiny Module : Scrutiny module of MONITOR, allows the Range Officer of Service Tax to feed the scrutiny details. The information of all previous scrutinizes and revenue are automatically displayed to the officers during the scrutiny. Senior officers can view the information and issue further directions on this matter.9. Audit Module: Audit Module assist the audit officers in selection of units for audit based on the revenue and risk parameters. It also has the provision of feeding the audit report of the assessee. The audit officers can use the information for better targetting of the assessee and carry out more effective audit.
10. Anti-Evasion Module: This feature of the website enables the officer of the anti-evasion branch of the Commissionerate to feed the data of the tax evaders. They can also feed the modus-opentii of the tax evasion. This information can be used by the audit officers or the range officers in audit and scrutiny of the returns.
11. Search Assessee Module: MONITOR allows the database search of the assessee based on different criterion like PAN No, Service Tax Code (STC), and Name of Assessee. The search feature uses fuzzy logic that enables the system to search the details of the assessee even if the full name or PAN no is not known.
12. Online Complaint: If any assessee fails to get the registration within the stipulated time or they have any complaint about any service tax matter, they can file complaint directly by email which are directly monitored by the Additional Commissioner, Systems. All the complaints were attended promptly by the officers and the registration certificate is granted within time or proper action is ensured on the complaint.
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