Companies to say goodbye to a horde of identifications, one unique ID numbers is enough, says CBDT

Companies operating in India will not have to carry with them a number of identifications, because Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) will soon bring in one unique identification number using which they would be able to carry out all business transactions.

CBDT and the ministry of corporate affairs are integrating their back-end operations so that they can provide a simple identity to the companies operating in India; in a way, this will do away with the multiplicity of numbers that they currently use, like corporate, employer and tax payer identification numbers.

"While this will be implemented at Centre's level, states will have a unique number under the Goods and Service Tax," a senior government official told ET.

"It will enhance transparency and reduce any complexities arising out of multiple filing, therefore adding to the ease of doing business in India," said Ashish Gupta, Partner - Financial Reporting Advisory Services, Grant Thornton India LLP.

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"Since it is a multi-ministry exercise it could take some more time," another senior government official told ET. When the government will integrate company identification number, tax and labour IDs to form a unique identity, this will cut on a lot of compliance requirements and filings for companies, thus saving them a lot of time and money.

"From regulator's point of view also, a single number will provide them all the information about companies. The platform would be the single largest database of all sectors," Sai Venkateshwaran, a partner at KPMG, told ET.

Not only this, the government is also trying to devise an e-signature so that companies can do away with the corporate stamps. For this, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) will be using the Aadhaar numbers to link it with e-signatures, so that they can use the digital locker - a 10MB free personal storage space, to securely store e-documents, like Indian individuals.

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