After implementing path breaking Goods and Services Tax (GST), changing the cumbersome and archaic Income Tax Act is the next big agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Union Government. While addressing the tax officials’ annual conference in September last year, PM Modi had called for fixing the country’s tax administration by 2022. At the event, the PM had said that the Income Tax Act 1961 was drafted 50 years ago and it needed to be redrafted.
In November last year, the government had set up a six-member task force to draft a new direct tax law to replace the existing Income Tax Act 1961. “Accordingly, in order to review the Act and to draft a new direct tax law in consonance with economic needs of the country, the Government has constituted a task force,” a finance ministry statement had said then. The convenor of the panel, Arbind Modi, retired on September 30, leaving the report in limbo.
The task force has now undergone some changes and it will submit the draft by February this year. In a statement on Monday, the finance ministry said the task force to draft a new direct tax law to replace the existing Income Tax Act will submit its report by February 28.
