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.