New Delhi: Software major Microsoft Corporation India Pvt Ltd and professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) India have launched a value added tax (VAT) solution for state tax departments in India. The two companies have jointly invested $1 million to develop the VAT solution, according to PwC director Roopen Roy.
“Most of our development work is done through partnerships as we strongly believe in it for addressing various domains and with PwC this is our second offering,” Microsoft Corporation India Pvt Ltd president Rajiv Nair said. The first joint offering of Microsoft with PwC was the Enlite solution.
The two companies expect that with the establishment of VAT regime by April 2003, VAT.Net would be the killer application. The VAT solution developed by PwC using the Microsoft .Net framework, simplifies the task of filing sales tax by businesses and facilitates consolidation of results by the state tax department on a periodic basis.
According to Mr Roy, the solution can be customised based on specific requirements of a single state on a case-to-case basis.
“We are working very closely with the centre and various state governments to help address e-governance requirements both as a technology as well as a consultant,” Mr Nair said.
Microsoft has already developed products including Windows XP and Office XP in nine regional languages. “In the next 12 to 18 months, we will introduce both Windows XP and Office XP in four new regional languages these include Bengali, Malayalam, Assamese and Oriya,” Mr Nair told the reporters, here.
The company has worked with C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), Webdunia and NCST (National Centre for Software Technology). “We intend to work with the same organisations for developing products in four new languages,” Mr Nair said.
