A mantra worth chanting

Mumbai: We live in taxing times, literally, but much as individuals and business institutions whine, bleat and complain about the burden that taxes place on them, the load on organisations and officials entrusted with the task ensuring tax compliance is much greater. This is one job as unenviable as it is difficult.

But help is at hand. Tata Infotech, a pioneer in the field of information technology, has introduced a product that makes the lives of tax officials and tax-collection agencies easier than ever before. TaxMantra, a component-based, integrated solution to process taxes and licenses, provides a framework to add and configure functional constituents in an easy and defined way. It does this in a manner that suits the specific needs of the tax, revenue and labour agencies.

The functional components of TaxMantra enable agencies to configure the product to suit their needs. It allows an agency to register tax payers, collect and process payments, assess taxes and fees, calculate penalties and interest, process cases, generate letters, and follow up and track defaulters. In other words, it has solutions for every taxation requirement that an agency may have, from present-day necessities to future needs.

TaxMantra has been designed and crafted keeping in mind the requirement in today’s tax environment for systems that are easy to alter, quick to implement, and capable of adapting as technology advances. TaxMantra’s object-oriented architecture allows it the flexibility of scaling up from a small solution to an enterprise-wide solution.

Configuration, rather than customisation, is TaxMantra’s aim. Its ‘configuration manager’ component is the engine that drives the processing within its functional modules. A broad range of what TaxMantra enables would read thus:

• taxpayer registration
• payment processing
• taxpayer and revenue accounting
• billing
• case management
• auditing
• correspondence
• security
• configuration

Tata Infotech also offers, through its partners, imaging, automated data capture, interactive voice responses, and remittance and cashiering components.

eTax services
This component provides capabilities for online registration, filing of tax returns and submission of payments. Taxpayers can enquire about their accounts, refunds, payments, return details, and account summary, all by using the Internet. The facility to defer a return filed is also available. The application site is fully secured and has the proper authentication and verification for secured taxpayer information.

Geo tax analyser
The Geo Tax Analyser is designed to provide the ability to map taxpayer information by using graphical tools, and also analyse the relationship between different kinds of tax data. By maintaining a dynamic link between the information and its physical address location, it is possible to create an ‘intelligent map’ which conveys more information than is actually visible.

Tax decision support system
The Tax Decision Support System offers an environment for decision support and data mining. It enables agencies to make complex business decisions through tax analysis and business modelling. It is particularly useful in areas such as tax legislation, fraud discovery, taxpayer profiling, revenue analysis and forecasting, resource optimisation and best practices, non-compliance trends, and patterns analysis.

About Tata Infotech
Tata Infotech, a total systems integrator, is one of the largest software services and solutions providers in the world. It offers state-of-the-art technology solutions, such as Call-M@il (a remote email access system), and SignBANK (a signature verification product). Its education division, Tata Infotech Education, has set up an International Interaction Network (IIN) to facilitate cross-fertilisation of innovative ideas between the company, industry and academics across the world.

Tata Infotech offers a broad-based portfolio of services through third-party alliances and technologies. Its activities include software consulting, hardware manufacturing, offshore software development, systems integration, distribution of international software products, collaboration in advanced technologies, and education services The company has a presence in technology areas such as decision support, imaging, GIS, object-oriented technology and reengineering.

The company has front offices in the United States, South Africa, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Tokyo and Australia, besides India. It has alliances with Unisys, Compaq, Sun, IBM, Cisco, Bann, Oracle, Tandem, Microsoft, MapInfo and Uniplex. Among its many achievements is being the highest ranked Indian company in Forbes’ ‘Global 100 Best Small Companies’ (November 1999).

Courtesy: www.tata.com