Monday, January 10, 2022

One Ledger for Income Tax accounting.

One Ledger for Income Tax accounting. (U.P. Prakasham, Nebula Solutions Ltd. 9840033881) 

For the Kind Attention of PM, FM, IT Department, Bankers and Chartered Accountants 

Now we have PAN and Aadhaar. There is a great scope of simplification and Tax Payer Friendly features that can be adopted. It is a long time wish that why there cannot be one single ledger accounting for each tax payer for the Income Tax? Why there should be refunds? If we visualize, advantages are plenty in favour. The learned Chartered Accounts and Financial experts can have a debate and recommend to the Government for the need of this highly efficient, transparent and user friendly arrangement for all the stake holders, Tax Payers, Accountants and Government. 

We can assume IT_account as a Bank. All the assessed amounts are debited in the assesee’s ledger by the Department. Similarly, Interest for delayed payment, penalty etc. are all debited. All the payments like TDS, Advance Tax, Self assessment tax and Final assessed Tax amount paid by the Tax payer in the account are credited. Every quarter, the account balance status can be computed. When the debits are more than the required credits, interest will be charged and debited to the account at the prevailing rate. In the same way, when the credit balance is more than all the demand value, the interest could be credited to the same account, may be at a lesser percentage value. 

One single account will be charged when monies are due to Department say at 12% p.a. for the deficit value or if there is excess available, the account may be credited with say 9% p.a. These excess amount in credit will be automatically taken for the future advance tax. There need not be unnecessary refund and the related Logistics of sending the refund cheques, or crediting in their bank accounts, instead the same can be done in the IT ledger account itself. Since some interest is given by the Department. The tax payers may like to leave it in this account as an accumulated amount for the forthcoming taxes. 

Some interesting methods can be visualized. The companies deducting TDS can make a bulk transfer to the Deductees Tax accounts through Electronic Journal entries submitted to the Department like request given to banks with a corresponding remittance in this account itself. This may be a solution to the ever prevailing problem of deducting TDS and not remitted by the Deducting entity. Many assessees suffer for no fault of theirs, since they have to pay additional amounts for their Advance Tax payments. Any corrections in the computed value can be reworked and either credited or debited periodically on the appropriate dates. In these days of fast computing power it will be a simple task. 

There could be millions of transactions and money flow can be reduced. It is not only the advancement in technology that should be used, but a possible smart methodology can also be adopted. 

Think about it!