By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, MAY 01, 2016: THE Government has set-up a dedicated structure for delivery and monitoring of Taxpayer Services in Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), its attached Directorates and field offices of Income Tax Department. Two separate Directorates of Tax Payer Services (TPS) have been created under the administrative control of Principal Director General of Income Tax (Administration & Tax Payer Services) for this purpose. In CBDT, Member (Revenue) has been made responsible for overseeing the delivery and monitoring of taxpayer services. The field offices of the income Tax Department have also been directed to create similar dedicated structure and mechanism for Tax Payer Services.

250 Aayakar Seva Kendras (ASKs) have been set-up throughout the country to function as single window units for redressal of taxpayer grievances in a time-bound manner. Grievance redressal has been made a key result area of the functioning of the Income Tax Department and instructions have been issued to field offices to accord utmost priority to this area of work. The performance in the area of grievances redressal is periodically reviewed.

Special efforts are being made to promptly dispose of older grievances registered on Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) as a result of which, the pendency of grievances which are more than one year old has been reduced from 1,910 as on 25.3.2015 to only 02 as on 25.4.2016. significant reduction in pendency has also been achieved in respect of grievances which are over six months old and grievances of other categories.

This was stated by Mr Jayant Sinha, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha on Friday.