Interim Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday laid a blueprint for effective indirect tax mechanism. While appealing to the business community to act ethically, he also cautioned tax officials to not be overzealous.
Goyal said: “At the outset, I am only standing in for Arun Jaitley. I had a chance to talk to him late last night and actually even early morning today. He is in good health, recovering very rapidly.” Goyal was addressing the Investiture Ceremony and International Customs Day organised by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC).
Talking about an effective and friendly tax administration, Goyal said a customer-friendly approach will give far-far greater results than any other approach. He said customers need to be trusted with a great degree of intelligence. “After all, we are here to do a job to ensure that the revenues of the government, which are rightfully due to be collected and which go to serve the poor of India, to create infrastructure, which go to develop security for our borders should not be lost,” he said while appealing to the business community that it is time to do business ethically and straight.
He said that days of high taxes or duties are over. “In the last few years there has been an honest attempt to change the culture and to make the administration very taxpayer-friendly, as well as continuously bring down tax rates, make compliance easier, make compliance more technology-driven and I must mention ensuring that every rupee of tax is collected with your efforts is put to good use, is used for the welfare and wider good of society,” he said.
Goyal emphasised the fact that be it tax payers or tax officers, every one is not bad. In fact, action of a few agonise a large section of people. According to him, it is always the few black sheep, that cause generalisation in the society or in the public mind that things are not going right.
He cautioned tax officials by saying that very often “we become over zealous and that causes a lot of agony, particularly to the honest taxpayer who believes that I have done no wrong but why should I be in general category of facing the wrath of tax administration.” Accordingly, he advised all tax men to collectively recognise their responsibility. “Each one of us as an individual represents 80,000 officers, each one of us will have to recognise that my actions are going to reflect on the image of 79,999 colleagues,” he said.