In a move to add more tax payers into the system, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday asked the officials for increasing the number of tax payers to 10 crore in the country from 5.43 crore at present. In order to make the tax payers’ base stronger, the Prime Minister also aspired there is an urgent need to remove fear of harassment from the minds of taxpayers and the tax officials should focus on five pillars of administration - revenue, accountability, probity, information and digitisation (RAPID). At the same time, he also asked tax officers to be ‘soft and sober’ in their approach and not treat everyone as tax evaders.
Inaugurating the two-day Rajasva Gyan Sangam here, the Prime Minister asked the officials to move towards digitisation in a bid to make tax administration better and efficient and work towards bridging the trust deficit.
Stating that the revenue department officials already know where the problem lies with regard to tax collection, Modi said after the two-day ‘Gyan Sangam’ the field officers should convert it to ‘Karma Sangam’ so that the ideas generated could lead to concrete actions on the ground.
However, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said while briefing reporters about the meeting, “Modi suggested that officials should endeavour to remove ‘fear of harassment’ from the minds of assesses and emphasised that their behaviour should be soft and sober.”
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and senior tax administrators of Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) were participating in the two-day annual conference. Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said that Prime Minister asked tax officials to build ‘bridge of confidence’ between tax payers tax officials should act like mentors of taxpayers and not treat them as tax evaders.
Modi also said, “People of India are inherently honest. If you build trust then people will pay taxes and you will be able to achieve the target. While there should be a respect for the rule of law among all citizens and fear of the long arm of the law for those who evade taxes, people should not fear tax administrators.”
As many as 15 officers from the CBDT and CBEC posed their questions to Prime Minister on various issues being faced by them in their regular work. The issues included dilemma over whether officials should act as law enforcement agency or taxpayer friendly agency while collecting due taxes from people.
Another suggestion from officers was to bring a ‘tax facilitation act’ which would have rules for dealing with tax payers. They also raised the issue of voluntary tax compliance, increasing tax base, upgradation of digital and physical infrastructure for tax administrators.
Sinha, however, pointed out that the Prime Minister laid out certain goals and objectives for the officials to increase the tax base to 10 crore from 5.43 crore at present. Sinha said of the 25 crore households in the country, 15 crore are agriculturalists and hence the remaining 10 crore should be under the tax net.