Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday launched a facility whereby 2.5 crore salaried employees in India will recieve text messages as the end of each quarter (three month period) informing them about their Tax Deducted at Source (TDS). 

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Jaitley said, "The tax payers have a right to know the deductions made from their salary/income on regular basis. He said that more and more tax payer services have to be provided in order to make the people tax complaint."

The Ministry of Finance said, "This initiative will initially benefit approximately 2.5 crore salaried cases. The CBDT will soon extend this facility to another 4.4 crore non-salaried taxpayers. The frequency of SMS alerts will be increased, once the process for filing TDS returns is streamlined to receive such information on a real-time basis."

The new step is an effort by the Income Tax Department to directly communicate deposit of tax deducted, through SMS alerts to salaried taxpayers, at the end of every quarter. In case of a mismatch, they can contact their deductor for necessary correction. Simultaneously, SMS alerts will also be sent to deductors who have either failed to deposit taxes deducted or to e-file their TDS returns by the due date.