The Central Excise and Service Tax Department has launched a pilot project for the implementation of Automation of Central Excise and Service Tax (ACES) in the Bhubaneswar-II Commissionerate.

ACES is a new centralised and Web-based software application that aims to automate all core processes of excise and service tax. The pilot project was launched at a function held here on Friday, which was attended by the leading tax payers of central excise and service tax, among others.

Launching the pilot project, Mr V Sridhar, member, Central Board of Excise and Customs, said that the department has been striving to harness information technology to improve taxpayer services as well as internal efficiencies.

In central excise and service tax, so far, our systems have been limited to data capture of returns and we have not had a system that automates our workflow. Automation of Central Excise and Service Tax (ACES) fills this gap, he said and added that the project is one of the important steps in the information technology consolidation undertaken by the Central Board of Excise and Customs.

"With the roll out of ACES, the taxpayers time and cost in complying with the tax provisions will come down drastically," he pointed out and added that it will also improve the efficiency of the department.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Yashodhan Parande, director general of systems, said that ACES is a mission mode project of the government of India under the national e-governance plan.

"Under the information technology consolidation project, it is proposed to connect all the central excise, customs and service tax offices across the country through a wide area network and provide linkages to other stake holders like custodians, banks, DGFT, income tax for validation and online clearances," he said, adding that the department is concurrently making large investments in brand new, state-of-the-art IT infrastructure.

Mr DP Dash, additional director general of systems made a detailed presentation on ACES, explaining the technical aspects and how the ACES will enable to obtain registration under central excise and service tax online, to electronically file statutory returns, claims, intimations etc and view and track the status of these documents online. "The software also has features to generate business related alerts and messages," he informed.

Among others, Mr PN Vittal Das, chief commissioner, Bhubaneswar zone, spoke on the occasion.