As part of the efforts to ease the compliance burden of taxpayers, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has issued a new functionality that would disclose if a person is liable to pay taxes at a higher rate for non-filing of returns with just a click of the button.
Accordingly, the CBDT on Tuesday clarified that its new functionality — Compliance Check for Sections 206AB & 206CCA — is operational and would reduce the compliance burden by putting out the need to tax a person at higher rate by just feeding his/her PAN details.
The Finance Act, 2021 inserted two new sections — 206AB and 206CCA — in the Income Tax Act, 1961, which takes effect from July 1. These sections mandate tax deduction or tax collection at a higher rate in case of certain non-filers (specified persons). The higher rate is twice the prescribed rate or 5 per cent, whichever is higher.
The CBDT said that to implement these two provisions, the tax deductor or collector was required to do due diligence of satisfying himself if the deductee or collectee is a specified person or person liable to be charged tax at higher rate. This would have resulted in extra compliance burden on such tax deductor or collector.
But with the new functionality getting operational, the board expects that it would further ease the burden of the tax deductors or collectors by ensuring that they need to check the PAN in the functionality at the beginning of the financial year without any need to check the PAN of the non-specified person again during that financial year.
The functionality allows the tax deductor or collector to feed the single PAN (PAN search) or multiple PANs (bulk search) of the deductee/coIIectee, which can get a response if such deductee/collectee is a specified person.
For PAN search, response will be visible on the screen which can be downloaded in the PDF format. For bulk search, response would be in the form of a downloadable file which can be kept for record.