new delhi the gover nment on friday unveiled a string of measures to blunt the criticism of tax terrorism and harassment and improve transparency using technology and big data from october 1 all notices summons orders by the income authorities shall be issued through a centralised computer system and will contain a computergenerated unique document identification number fm nirmala sitharaman saidany communication issued without the computer generated document identification number shall be non est in law sitharaman said all old notices to be decided by october 1 or uploaded again through the new system the minister emphasised that any notice without the document identification numbers will be considered invalid and a taxpayer need not reply to that particular noticethe minister said all notices would be disposed of within three months starting october 1 the government has already announced that the tax department will use technology for faceless scrutiny of tax payers from october it would be through randomised selectionthe tax department has also unveiled prefilled income tax returns and the department will have a riskbased approach in dealing with taxpayers on the indirect tax side the government has reduced the number of returns and simplified the formschanges made by the government in recent months have been consistent in their approach reducing harassment and ensuring that an oversight or minor infringement does not get treated as crime this has been evident in the move towards faceless processing and assessment matters relating to income tax including it returns changes in the companies act which promote ease of doing business as well as increased responsibility on companies sitharaman saidany violation of the corporate social responsibility mandates will be treated as a civil offence and not a criminal one as had been proposed earlier fm saidthe tax department has been under fire after the suicide of coffee baron v g siddhartha who had alleged harassment by tax officials in his letter sitharaman has been touring various cities to meet tax officials traders and the business community to resolve issues and assure the business community that the tax department will not resort to any harassment sitharaman said tax officials have been told not to overreach to meet targets and the targets set by the government are realistic