Vice President urges IRS Officer Trainees to make ethics, excellence guiding principles

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday advised IRS officer trainees to make ethics and excellence as their guiding principles and to make India a business friendly, entrepreneur-friendly tax regime and a people-centric tax administration.

The Vice President was addressing the 173 Officer Trainees of the 72nd Batch of Indian Revenue Service, here on Tuesday.

Addressing the gathering here, he said, "Reforms in governance, path-breaking legislative and administrative measures like GST are changing the way we govern ourselves.

Quoting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's advice to all administrators on 'Reform, Perform and Transform' he said, "You have the aptitude and a unique opportunity to reform and transform our country with your performance."

Emphasising on the efforts by the central government he said over the last four years, the Union Government's Budget expenditure has increased from around Rs 16 lakh crore to around Rs 28 lakh crore.

"Government's development efforts have been ably supported by the buoyant revenue collection due to efforts of Revenue Department. Over the last four years, the Central Government's net Tax revenue has increased from Rs 8.2 lakh crore to estimated Rs 17 lakh crore. An estimated increase of about Rs.9 lakh crore in five years is a telling example of efficiency and competence of our Revenue Officials," added Naidu.

Asserting that there has been an 80 per cent increase in the tax base over last four years, he added, "A lot of transformation is taking place in the Tax administration in the country to promote a culture of tax compliance. The Demonetization brought an undisclosed income of about Rs 1,30,000 crore under the tax and led to seizure and attachment of assets worth approximately Rs 50,000 crore. Benami assets worth Rs 6,900 crore and foreign assets worth Rs 1,600 crore have been attached. As many as 3, 38, 000 shell companies have been detected and de-registered."

Saying a lot of transformation is taking place in the Tax administration in the country to promote a culture of tax compliance, Naidu said that the most remarkable outcome of demonetization was the sustained growth of digital transactions leaving behind digital trail for the Revenue department to follow. "As tax-authorities, you should encourage digital transactions and incentivize business to encourage their customers to adopt digital transactions," he added.

The vice president also pointed out that the government is making all efforts to make the tax regime easier.

He added, "Our effort is to make our tax regime easy, transparent and predictable. We expect you to facilitate this process of further easing the tax regime without relaxing the compliance.