India needs to improve taxation provisions of transfer pricing

New Delhi, July 3 (UNI) Tax experts today called upon India to improve upon its taxation provision relating to transfer pricing, strengthen audit capacity, improve taxpayer services and move towards an integrated Goods and Services Tax (GST).

They also called for better cordination between the Custom and Income Tax Departments in valuation matters.

''At present, more than sixty per cent of the international transactions are between Multinational Corporation. India's experience in the field of transfer pricing is only five years.

It needs to improve upon its transfer pricing norms and provisions relating to taxation,'' Mr Pier Carlo Padoan, Deputy Secretary General, OECD, told a news conference here.

The press event was also addressed by Mr K Mohandas, Additional Secretary, Department of Revenue and Ms Ursula Schaefer-Preuss, Vice President (Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development), Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The experts were discussing the delebration of the two-day international conference relating to taxation issues. The event was organised by ADB and apart from Indian officials, it was attended by experts from nine countries. These included the US, the UK, South Africa, Canada, China, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and South Korea.

Mr Mohandas said the experts were of the view that to improve the efficiency of audit, there was need to prescribe a Standard Audit File Format for auditing taxpayers, using computerised records.

There was also need for continuation of mandatory order of large taxpayers and close monitoring of compliance behaviours of these taxpayers by assigning one such person to a tax executive. There was also need for sharing of data between different tax departments for better risk management.

Regarding improving taxpayers services, the Conference suggested greater deployment of Information Technology (IT) to areas like filing of returns, grant of refunds and giving tax credits.

While, the participants debated the benefits of a single versus dual GST, there was general agreement of moving towards this universal taxation system.

UNI