ICICI Infotech gets VAT contract

By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 22 September 2004, 19:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: The Committee of State Finance Ministers on Value Added Tax (VAT) has awarded the contract for roll out of a National Tax Information Exchange System (TINXSYS) to a consortium led by ICICI Infotech Ltd. For the first time, States have agreed to share with each other the basic information on sales tax that is available at their end. “This TINXSYS project would primarily facilitate information exchange between sales tax departments across the country and establish a database for all inter-State transactions,” said Ramesh Chandra, Secretary, Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers on VAT. The project would be implemented on a build, own, operate and transfer (BOOT) basis over a period of 5 years. It will cover all States and Union Territories and would be completed in two phases. The first phase involves pilot implementations in seven States (West Bengal, Karnataka, Kerala, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Assam) over the next seven months. The contract to ICICI Infotech was awarded after a tendering process in which a TCS-led consortium and a Wipro-led consortium also participated. “It would help in the verification and tracking of inter-State transactions and curtail the scope for tax evasion. One of the reasons for under development of the tax system is the absence of reliable data. TINXSYS would help in construction of a database and generate requisite MIS reports for participating States," Chandra said. Manoj Kunkalienkar, Executive Director and President, ICICI Infotech, told newspersons that the value of the project would be between $5-7 million.