The full form of OLTAS is On-Line Tax Accounting System.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) is responsible for administering various direct taxes through the Commissioners of Income Tax located in different parts of the country. The Commissioners of Income Tax are entrusted with the task of collection as well as refund of all kinds of direct taxes such as income Tax, Corporation Tax, tax deducted at source etc. under the Income tax provisions.

The Principal Chief Controller of Accounts (Pr.CCA) is the apex authority of the accounting organisation of the CBDT. Under the departmentalised set up, the Pr.CCA, CBDT have been assigned the functions relating to accounting of all receipts and refunds pertaining to the Direct Taxes.

Earlier, all direct taxes were collected manually by Reserve Bank of India or branches of State Bank of India. With an intention to increase the number of points for collection of taxes many other branches of public sector banks were also involved. Further to provide better service to taxpayers specific attention was given to accounting system of direct taxes. However, manual process of collection and accounting of taxes had many flaws and errors and also was extremely difficult to maintain.

Hence, in order to address issues associated with manual process of collection and accounting of direct taxes and also considering the technological revolution which replaced electronic means over manual process, Online Tax Accounting System (OLTAS) was introduced in June 2004. In order to make efficient implementation of OLTAS, the following bodies worked together:

• The CBDT
• The controller of accounts
• The Indian Bank Association
• The Reserve Bank of India

OLTAS is a system for collection, accounting and reporting of the receipts and payments of Direct Taxes from all kinds of taxpayers, online through a network of bank branches. The taxpayers’ data flows from banks directly to Tax Information Network (TIN). TIN  is set up and maintained by the National Securities Depository Ltd., to manage all the data and information about challans between the tax department and the banks. OLTAS was introduced with the following objectives:

• Accounting of direct taxes online
• Collection of direct taxes online
• Reporting receipts and payments of direct taxes online

OLTAS was implemented in 3 phases and presently 32 public and private sector banks are authorised under OLTAS. In the initial stages, task was confined to data which was related to tax information. However, post April 2005, the project went online and now the banks were also required to reconcile daily tax collection with the information and data received by TIN from the banks.