Assisted Access to e-governance services-will this be its Waterloo?

Corporate and Tax laws/procedures have been significantly modified to allow for e-governance. Some examples are mentioned below

• All excise/service tax returns must be filed online irrespective of amount etc
• Significant chunk of income tax returns are filed online 
• All company law forms/returns are filed online, and payments
• Many state VAT laws now mandate electronic filing of returns/audit reports/registration

To ensure greater data integrity, the initial mandate was that certain practising professionals(CA, CS,CWA) could pre-certify the filing, using their digital signature. But the issue then rose about accessibility. After all, not all are techsavvy, even fewer have a good broadband connection etc. Therefore, the concept then arose of Certified Filing Centres(CFCs) for both corporate and tax laws, which essentially provide administrative support for filing including scanning, uploading, reformatting etc. The primary responsibility of the filing remains with the filer though. These CFCs may be run by professionals themselves or by private parties.

The Code of Conduct of the respective professional institutes may ensure good quality work by professional run CFCs but the issue is whether this is sustainable? After all, such work does not need a CA to do it, and would result in higher fees than compared to non CA/CS/CWA doing it.

But if one throws open CFCs to persons not regulated by their respective professional councils, then the issue comes about compensation for erroneous filings etc. No amount of security deposit can really suffice, nor can the amount be readily computed. To strike the balance between public interest(lower fees) and information integrity, a good midway could be online checks/validations which would avoid gross errors, as well as random confirmations in case of outlier numbers. This is done for TDS returns, MVAT returns etc, and can be extended to all. I'm sure the IT industry would be ready to help set up and design forms allowing for live validation checks and confirmations. If this is not done, then the inevitable errors when publicized, may lead to loss of faith in the new system