Finance Minister of India Nirmala Sitharaman has announced that reforms of the Income Tax Act would ensure that income tax would no longer be seen as a ‘tiresome exercise’.

Speaking at an event in New Delhi, the union minister said that the government was keen on undertaking ‘comprehensive’ reforms of Customs to enable transparency in the finance sector.

“There are quite a few things to do. There is the complete overhaul of the Customs area. We need to have a lot more simplified Customs department for people to feel that it is not tiresome and cumbersome for them to comply with the expectations in the rules, to make it more transparent,” Sitharaman said.

“We are looking at it in that sort of way comprehensively… We have brought down Customs duties over the last two years steadily, but in those few items where we are still considered to be over the optimal rate, we will bring them down as well. So, Customs is my next big cleaning up assignment if I can say,” she added.

Sitharaman said that measures such as faceless assessment were introduced to ease Customs-related formalities. Reforms in tax administration were also being done.

With the Indian currency currently at a level that is too high against the dollar, one hopes that these amendments would help make tax payments easy. – Image by freepik – editor@nrifocus.com