The 're-designing' of the administrative structure, as the government calls it, was cleared by the Union cabinet in the last week of August and is expected to be notified in the Gazette soon.

There will be no retrenchments. However, 2,752 posts of clerks and group D staff will be abolished and some other posts redesignated.

The focus will be on dividing the country's 15 million registered taxpayers into more manageable units - or ranges, in departmental parlance - of 20,000 each, headed by an additional commissioner or a joint commissioner. Three ranges will form a commissionerate, or a geographical region, headed by a commissioner.

This will increase the number of regions across the country to 250, from the current 105. At the lowest level, 500 taxpayers will be grouped into a ward, to be headed by an income tax officer. At present, wards differ in size from hundreds to the thousands. Four wards will form a circle, to be headed either by a deputy commissioner or an assistant commissioner. At the highest level, the five-member CBDT will get two additional posts. Keeping in view the importance of computerisation in the new setup, the government has created the post of a member (IT systems). The other new position will be for grievances and for taxpayer assistance. In the five-tier hierarchy, the CBDT will be at the top, followed by the chief commissioners at level II, the commissioner of income tax at level III, additional and joint commissioners at level IV and the assessing officer at level V.

Corresponding to the increase in the chief commissioners' cadre, the department will have 698 commissioners against 408 currently. This will be done by promoting additional commissioners and through a fresh round of recruitment.

From the level of CCIT to that of inspector, the total number of posts for officers will go up to 17,598 from the existing 14,317.The post of superintendent-1 has been redesignated as that of an administrative officer, the post of superintendent-2 will be that of a superintendent and the head clerk will now be called a senior tax assistant. The number of these posts have been increased to 814 (from the existing 317), to 2,468 (710) and to 8,030 (2,240) respectively.

The number of non-executive and group-D posts will go down to 37,639 from 43,627 at present.The restructuring exercise envisages a fully computerised setup containing the permanent account number (PAN), details of bank accounts and trading activities of the assessees. The basic level for data storage will be the range (20,000 taxpayers), which will be handled by the record-keeping unit. The RKU, the assessment unit and the collection unit will be the three functional units making up each range. The present workload has been distributed on the basis of the 1997-98 figure for registered taxpayers (15 million). u However, the latest total is 22 million, so there may be some further modifications for redistribution of workload.

The plan was guided by the need to keep the restructuring cost at zero, for reducing stagnation at all levels, and for avoiding retrenchments. The net saving for the department will be around Rs 1.68 crore. The cost of upgradation of posts is Rs 17.87 crore, while the cost of abolishing posts will be Rs 19.45 crore.