OLTAS

What is OLTAS

OLTAS means On Line Tax Accounting System.

This is Income Tax Department's initiative to receive information
and maintain records of tax paid through banks through online
upload of challan details is named as OLTAS (Online Tax
Accounting System).

Why was OLTAS needed?

The collection of government Taxes was done through Banks in a

manual way. This procedure was cumber-some, time consuming and
also error-prone. To overcome the shortcomings associated with
Manual Collection of Taxes, The advisory Group on Tax Reforms
under the Chairmanship of Dr. Vijay Kelkar had recommended
networking of Income Tax Department, Banks and Reserve Bank
of India to facilitate On-line Transmission of details regarding
tax collection/refund, etc. between banks and offices of Income
Tax Department and also RBI for settlement of funds.

To facilitate this Online Process, a Core Group from Reserve Bank

of India, Indian Banks Association, Central Board of Direct
Taxes, Controller of Accounts worked together, and as an
outcome of this deliberations, OLTAS was born.

The implementation of OLTAS was divided into three pilot

phases, to acquaint all the participants about the process flow,
between June 2003 and April 2004:-

Originally, the Pilot on OLTAS was confined only to the corporate

tax payers, however, after 15th February 2004, the project
covered both corporate and individual tax payers and finally, from
1st June 2004, the Pilot went All-India, covering all the
authorized branches of the 32 participating banks all over the
country.

Originally, the OLTAS Project covered only the tax information

data. The funds collected by the bank branches followed the
manual mode and was reconciled with the paper scrolls sent to the
Zonal Accounts Office. However, from 1st April 2005, the
OLTAS Pilot Project was commercially rolled out and the
settlement of funds was also migrated to on-line mode. Thus,
from 1st April 2005, the banks had to reconcile funds collected
on a day to day basis with the electronic data reported by banks
to TIN.

What is TIN?
TIN stands for Tax Information Network. TIN has been
established by National Securities Depository Ltd., to manage the
Challan Information’s and acts as a link between the Banks and
the Tax Department.

Only Bank Branches with access to OLTAS Software can collect

the Taxes. The Banks depending on the business profile installed
the OLTAS Software in the Branches.
.

However, over a period of time, many banks started to offer a

link to OLTAS through their Net Banking Site too. In fact, this
facility assisted the growth of ePayments in our country. As the
corporate and individuals started using the OLTAS through the
Net Banking Sites, they gained confidence in the Net Banking,
which encouraged them to try other forms of ePayments viz
RTGS, NEFT, POS Terminals.

e-Payment facilitates payment of direct taxes online by

taxpayers. To avail of this facility the taxpayer is required to
have a net-banking account with any of the banks listed below,
which are the only banks are offering this facility at present i.e
01/11/2009.

Account Holders of
Allahabad Bank
Andhra Bank
Axis Bank
Bank of Baroda
Bank of India
Bank of Maharashtra
Canara Bank
Central Bank of India
Corporation Bank
Dena Bank
HDFC Bank
ICICI Bank
IDBI Bank
Indian Bank
Indian Overseas Bank
Jammu & Kashmir Bank
Oriental Bank of Commerce
Punjab National Bank
State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur
State Bank of Hyderabad
State Bank of India
State Bank of Indore
State Bank of Mysore
State Bank of Patiala
State Bank of Travancore
Syndicate Bank
UCO Bank
Union Bank of India
United Bank of India
Vijaya Bank

Procedure for e-payment of Taxes:-

1. To pay taxes online the taxpayer will select the relevant

challan i.e. ITNS 280, ITNS 281, ITNS 282 or ITNS 283, as
applicable.

2. Enter its PAN / TAN as applicable. There will be an online

check on the validity of the PAN / TAN entered.

3. If PAN/ TAN is valid the taxpayer will be allowed to fill up

other challan details like accounting head under which payment is
made, name and address of TAN and also select the bank through
which payment is to be made, etc.

4. On submission of data entered a confirmation screen will be

displayed. If the taxpayer confirms the data entered in the
challan, it will be directed to the net-banking site of the bank.

5. The taxpayer will login to the net-banking site with the user
id/ password provided by the bank for net-banking purpose and
enters payment details at the bank site.
6. On successful payment a challan counterfoil will be displayed
containing CIN, payment details and bank name through which e-
payment has been made. This counterfoil is proof of payment
being made.

Abbreviations:-

OLTAS – On Line Tax Accounting System.

TIN – Tax Information Network.

CIN – Challan Identification Number.

ZOA – Zonal Accounts Office.