Government today dismissed the media report that it is considering a proposal to merge the Central Board of Direct Taxes and Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs.

The Finance Ministry has termed the news item as factually incorrect clarifying that the government has no proposal to merge the two boards.

The Ministry said the report has been published without due verification of facts from the competent authorities and it only creates a policy distraction when the Ministry is amidst implementation of a large number of taxpayers’ friendly reforms like transition from manual assessment based on territorial jurisdiction to a completely randomized electronic faceless assessment, electronic verification or transactions and faceless appeals.

As pointed out in the report, the merger was one of the recommendations of the Tax Administrative Reforms Commission (TARC).

The Ministry said, the report of TARC was examined in detail by the government and this recommendation of TARC was not accepted.

The Finance Ministry said,  this misleading article has been published with no due diligence of even checking official records placed in the public domain or checking the latest status with relevant competent authorities in the Ministry.