a. Electronic Interaction
The existing assessees are not required to register afresh with the department. They are required to update their contact details ŝŶƚŚĞĚĞƉĂƌƚŵĞŶƚ͛ƐƌĞŐŝƐƚƌĂƚŝŽŶĚĂƚĂďĂƐĞ with their valid and current e-mail IDs. For this purpose, they have to contact the jurisdictional Range Officers or LTU Client Executives.
The ACES application automatically sends mails to the e-mail IDs, indicating a Temporary Personal Identification No.(TPIN) and Password. The mail contains a hyperlink to the ACES website. Assessees can click this link to proceed to register with ACES.
b. Service Desk
In order to help users, DGS has set up a Service Desk with a National Toll-free Number 1800 425 4251, which can be accessed by both departmental officers and taxpayers between 9 AM to 7 PM on all working days. They can also send e-mails (24X7) to [email protected]. All calls/e-mails are logged by the Service Desk Agents, who issue unique ticket numbers. If these Agents cannot resolve the issues at their end, they can escalate it to different teams, namely the application team, Network team or the Hardware team for necessary action. The DGS teams closely monitor the progress of work in the service desk, analyze the issues and issue suitable instructions for early resolution. Close monitoring by the DGS team has resulted in a very high degree of resolution. 29,959 (99.3%) out of 30,168 issues received, have been resolved so far.
c. ACES Certified Facilitation Centres (CFCs)
In order to provide multiple-access points throughout India and services to taxpayers who may not have requisite IT infrastructure/ resources to use ACES, facilities have been provided in ACES to enable CFCs ƚŽ ƚƌĂŶƐĂĐƚ ŽŶ ďĞŚĂůĨ ŽĨ ƚŚĞ ƚĂdžƉĂLJĞƌƐ͘ dŚĞ ,ŽŶ͛ble Finance Minister has approved the proposal for nation-wide setting up of ACES Certified Facilitation Centres (CFCs) by the Members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India (ICWAI) and the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI), having valid Certificates of Practice. DGS, Delhi has
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entered into Memorandum of Undertakings (MOU) with ICAI, ICWAI & ICSI to set up CFCs across the country. Authorized persons of ACES Certified Facilitation Centres (CFCs), set up by ICAI, ICWAI, ICSI and others can work in ACES on behalf of Central Excise and Service Tax assessee. Currently, more than 60 such CFCs are operating in about 26 cities across India. Various services are available on payment of prescribed charges such as digitisation of paper documents and on-line filing/uploading of documents such as Application for Registration, Returns, Claims, Permissions and Intimations etc. in ACES.
d. Facilities for E-filing of Returns and E-payment of Duty/Tax
In order to assist the assessees in using ACES, CBEC has issued a comprehensive on the procedure for Electronic filing of Central Excise and Service Tax Returns and for Electronic Payment of Excise Duty and Service Tax. Updated e-filing utilities for all Central Excise and Service Tax Returns have been released and can be downloaded using the Download link on homepage. Further, to make it easy for the Dealers to file returns in ACES, an XML schema has been hosted on the ACES website. By suitably modifying their own software application and using this schema the assessees (Dealers) can also generate an up-loadable form of return directly from their own database without the need to make fresh data entry.
CBEC plans to release similar schema for Excise Returns (ER 1 and 2) by the end of April, 2010.
e. Training of Officials and Assessees
Training of over 20, 000 departmental officers and over 17 lakh assessees spread across the country was a daunting task. The following strategy was used to train the users and various stakeholders:
x Preparation of Training Material: Development of a self-learning, multi-media-based, Learning Management Software (LMS), User Manuals, FAQs and other Training Material.
x Learning Management Software (LMS): For the LMS, the DGS team held series of meetings with a new team, engaged by the vendor, to design the scope and finalize the text and other details of LMS. User Manuals and FAQs were scrutinized and hosted on the ACES website.
x Training-of-Trainers (TOT): DG Systems collaborated with the National Academy of Customs, Excise and Narcotics (NACEN) to impart training through the Training-of-Trainers (TOT) mode. In Toto, 19 TOTs were held in different cities for lead trainers, selected from the field formations. Using the training material supplied by the DGS, these lead trainers, under the overall supervision of DGS teams, trained other officers in the Commissionerates, Divisions and Ranges.
x Selection and training of Systems Managers: Commissionerates were advised to identify officers with proper aptitude and knowledge to work as Systems Managers, called Commissionerate Administrators. In order to attract talents, it was kept-rank-neutral so that eligible officers, irrespective of their rank could shoulder this important task. These officers, who control the Access Control Logic (ACL) module of ACES and assign role, jurisdiction and activities to the officers, were given extensive training by DGS teams in different batches.
x Training of Taxpayers: Apart from training the departmental officers, DGS officials held series of workshops and training programmes in different parts of the country by collaborating with different local Chambers of Commerce and Industry/Trade Associations and Institutes. Brochures on ACES were designed and prepared by DGS team and got printed through the Directorate of Publicity and Public Relations (DP&PR), CBEC. The LMS was also copied onto CDs by the DP&PR. These training
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materials were hosted on the ACES website and were also circulated among the participants in the training programmes.
Governance Structure
Status
ACES, which was rolled out on a pilot basis in December, 2008 has been completely rolled-out nationally in all 104 Commissionerates of Central Excise, Service Tax and Large Tax Payer Units. This application automates all major processes in Central Excise and Service Tax through a workflow-based application.
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