Ahmedabad: Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) submitted a representation to the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), seeking relief for small and medium taxpayers from what it described as onerous compliance requirements relating to electronic maintenance of books of account, under the new Income Tax Act.The chamber has urged the tax authority to recalibrate the mandate for daily backups of electronic books, arguing that the current expectation imposes disproportionate cost and operational pressure on smaller businesses.GCCI proposed that the requirement of daily backup of electronic records should be made applicable only to taxpayers with turnover exceeding Rs 10 crore. The chamber contended that micro, small and medium enterprises often operate with limited accounting staff, constrained budgets and dependence on external accountants or service providers, making daily backup protocols difficult to implement in practice and expensive to audit and document.Jainik Vakil, chairman, GCCI direct tax committee flagged recurring issues such as the cost of secure storage infrastructure, subscription and maintenance charges for accounting software, cyber-security safeguards, and the need for continuous monitoring to ensure backups are completed, retrievable and tamper-resistant. GCCI said that for smaller entities, these obligations divert time and resources from core business activity, especially for traders and manufacturers managing high-volume, low-margin operations.GCCI argued that while large enterprises generally have dedicated finance and IT teams to ensure automated backup systems and internal controls, smaller taxpayers face a heavier relative burden that may increase inadvertent non-compliance risk.Vakil said, “The intent of digitisation and stronger record integrity is understandable, but compliance must be proportionate to capacity. For an SME, enforcing daily backups as a uniform mandate effectively converts a basic bookkeeping obligation into an IT governance requirement. Our request to CBDT is to introduce a turnover-based threshold so that businesses above Rs 10 crore, which typically have systems and staff to support daily backup and recovery drills, follow the stricter standard, while smaller taxpayers are allowed a more practical frequency without fear of penal consequences. Relief of this nature will reduce compliance anxiety, lower avoidable costs, and let entrepreneurs focus on productivity, jobs and growth while still maintaining reliable books.”
