For taxmen, the vast repertoire of histories and legislations concerning tax cases would now be just a click away, with the setting up of a knowledge portal, enabling them to adopt a better approach for revenue collection.
The department has started to prepare the knowledge portal which will be fully equipped with the best orders, practices and write-ups on various legal issues arising out of the Income-Tax Act.
Officials working in various I-T Directorates across the country have been asked to contribute their experiences, knowledge and dealings on any selected topic in the form of a synopsis.
"This maiden initiative is an step towards collating the tacit knowledge existing within this department. Once established, this knowledge portal will work as the central repository of knowledge for the department," Member-Secretary, Committee for Compilation of Best Orders/Practices (I-T), Nilimesh Baruah said.
The initiative was mooted during the director generals and chief commissioners (I-T) conference held on June 9-10 in the national capital and then the 'concept paper' was written, he said.
The knowledge portal will be dedicated to the department in a weeks time, he said.
The synopses collected at the end of the exercise will be uploaded on the internal computer networks of the I-T department and will also be brought out in a text format.
The compiled information would then be available on the click of a button which will promptly dig out information with the help of a powerful search engine, a senior fnance ministry official involved in the exercise said.
The information and data which is available with the tax department across the country is mammoth having wide ramifications during and after the case, the official said.
Finance ministry officials say that with the inception of the knowledge portal, tax collections and checking of tax evasions will give them a 'better approach' option.
Direct tax collections in the country have recently gone up by 38.3 per cent in the first five months of the current fiscal at Rs 84,409 crore (Rs 844.09 billion) compared with Rs 61,030 crore (Rs 610.3 billion) in a year-ago period.
Analysts had earlier said robust tax collections are expected to help the government maintain fiscal deficit at 2.5 per cent during 2008-09 despite increase in expenditure in the election year.