Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday urged young officers of Indian Revenue Service (Customs and Central Excise) to maintain absolute standards of ethics and 100 percent integrity during their long careers.
He also asked them to emulate the Gandhian principle that even in moments of struggle; they should be in a position to maintain the position of ethics and morality on their side.
He was addressing the 67th batch of IRS Officer Trainees (OTs).
Jaitley said if they maintain absolute standards of ethics and 100 percent integrity, they would definitely go a long way. All this was to be accompanied with professional competence and a judicious and fair approach in tax collection, he added.
Jaitley further said that taxation should not be a painful process for the people.
Ideally, the government should collection taxes like a honeybee which sucks just the right amount of honey from the flower so that both can survive, Jaitley said.
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He also maintained that the starting point of any activity is investment and the purpose of investment is to yield profitability, and in this process, he added that investors work out the element of taxability, and this tax content which is generated as revenue, is used for infrastructure and for fulfilling the social responsibilities of the state as well as to yield more economic activity.
He urged the young IRS officers to retain their idealism throughout their careers.
For this, Jaitley said they needed to have the basic cardinal principle of striving for excellence.
About 190 officer trainees have reported for training, including 25 officers of the earlier batch who had availed of extraordinary leave. There are also five customs officers from the Royal Govt. of Bhutan who are training with this batch.
The educational qualifications of the OTs varies from engineering degrees to doctors to post graduate degree holders and graduates in the field of humanities science and commerce besides management and law graduates and a Ph D.
The batch is representative of the various states of India, covering Jammu and Kashmir to Tamil Nadu and Gujarat to Manipur and Nagaland. The largest representation comes from the state of Rajasthan followed by Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra. Their age profile varies from 24 years to 35 years.
Chairman of the CBEC Najib Shah, CBEC members Ram Tirath, P.K.Bansal and Ananya Ray, and other senior officers of the ministry and the CBEC were present on the occasion.