Date:17/10/2004 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/10/17/stories/2004101701040200.htm

Back IDBI Bank, NSDL launch online tax payment facility

Our Bureau

(From left): Mr C.B. Bhave, Managing Director, NSDL, with Mr A.K. Das, Principal Chief Controller of Accounts, CBDT, and Mr G.V. Nageswara Rao, MD & CEO, IDBI Bank, at a press conference to launch the country's first online direct tax payment facility in Mumbai on Saturday. — Paul Noronha

Mumbai , Oct. 16

IDBI Bank and National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) have tied up to launch an online direct tax payment facility, which will enable individuals and corporates to make tax payments over the Net.

"Online tax payment will be of a great help to busy executives and those who travel a lot. For corporates, we can integrate this facility with their back-end accounting systems so that the whole process is fully automated," said Mr G.V. Nageswara Rao, Managing Director and CEO, IDBI Bank.

The e-payment facility initiated at the NSDL Web site can be used to pay income-tax, corporation tax, gift tax, TDS etc, over the Internet.

The details entered by the assesse are validated by NSDL and passed to IDBI Bank, through a secure payment gateway. The bank debits the customer account after authentication and completes the payment of tax to the Government as an agency bank. This facility is a key initiative approved by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) as part of its efforts to automate tax collection and administration.

IDBI and NSDL have developed the entire integrated solution for online tax payment in-house. The traffic between the various sites involved in the transactions is fully encrypted using http protocols with industry standard digital certificates from verisign.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr C.B. Bhave, Managing Director, NSDL, this project will help customers reduce unnecessary wastage of time and effort in paying their taxes. Once customers fill the online form, they can take a print out of the acknowledgement indicating the challan identification number for their record.

"NSDL also wants to make the system of applying for PAN cards easy. We are introducing the online pan application facility," he said.

Mr A.K. Das, Principal Chief Controller of Accounts, CBDT, said the emphasis of the Government has been to tax at a lower rate but on a larger base. Private banks are doing a splendid job on tax-collections by leveraging technology.

So far, 33 banks are authorised for tax collections. However, IDBI Bank and State Bank of India are the only two banks that have been authorised to collect tax payments online. Others will be authorised on a case-to-case basis. Banks such as Punjab National Bank and Bank of Baroda are in the pipeline, he said.

Speaking on the sidelines of the function, Mr Das said up to Rs 6,120 crore was misclassified in IT returns filed by corporates this year. This was because they ticked the income-tax column instead of the corporate tax column while filing the returns.