Mumbai: All central excise duties and service taxes of a minimum of Rs50 lakh payable annually by a corporate will have to be made on electronic mode from next fiscal.

While all corporates are required to pay their corporate income tax online, finance minister P Chidambaram said, the threshold of Rs50 lakh would be subsequently removed and everybody will have to pay excise duty and service tax online in due course.

Chidambaram was launching the electronic accounting system in excise and service tax (Easiest) of the central board of excise and customs in association with principal chief controller of accounts, RBI and 28 banks.

Called Easiest, the system uses the electronic environment for expeditious transmission of tax information to ensure greater accuracy and reliability of tax payment data.

The new system does away with the requirement of the taxpayer filing four copies of challan under the manual system. He would now he required to file only a single challan for payment of central excise and service tax by using Easiest system.

The online system would capture all the essential information required from the assessee in relation to his tax payments, by allotting them 'challan identification number' (CIN).

The CBDT already has an online system, called OLTAS, which, users say, is prone to errors. Chidambaram said while OLTAS has improved quite a lot from its earlier version, it is not entirely error-free. While "errors continue to occur in some banks and some branches of banks," he asked users to be vigilant against errors in the new system.