New Delhi, Feb 5 (IANS): The direct tax dispute resolution scheme 'Vivad se Vishwas' brought by the Centre in March last year has helped tax dispute settlement worth over Rs 97,000 crore.

So far 1,25,144 cases have opted for the scheme which is 24.5 per cent of the entire long pending 5,10,491 cases that were in various tax disputes at different legal fora, said sources in the Department of Revenue (DoR) adding that the response to the scheme has been very encouraging.

Sources said that the Vivad se Vishwas Scheme has received 15 times better response in comparison to Direct Tax Dispute Resolution Scheme, 2016 (DTDRS) and with regard to the settled disputed amount, it is 153 times of DTDRS, which is a huge success.

Earlier, such tax dispute resolution schemes like Kar Vivad Samadhan Scheme, 1998 (KVSS) and Direct Tax Dispute Resolution Scheme, 2016 (DTDRS) could not gather much momentum. The 1998's KVS Scheme could gather merely Rs 739 crore with just few thousand cases while the 2016's DTDR Scheme resolved just 8,600 and odd cases only worth an amount of Rs 631 crore.

Sources said that Vivad se Vishwas Scheme has far-ranging impact on the ease of doing business as this would facilitate the taxpayers in dispute with tax administration to start afresh with clean slate and also help to clean the tax ecosystem of its litigation legacy forever, thereby saving on cost and resources for all the parties involved in litigations.