NEW DELHI, Mar 12: Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Tuesday called for increasing the number of taxpayers but cautioned that it should be achieved through counselling and not invasive actions.
He also said that citizen-centric initiatives have boosted people’s confidence in the tax administration.
Addressing a batch of officer trainees of the Indian Revenue Service here, Dhankhar noted that direct tax collections have shown a three-fold rise in the last decade and the number of people filing income tax returns has increased nearly two and a half times.
The tax administrator’s relationship with taxpayers, he underlined, is now one of togetherness and consensus.
The Income Tax Department now has a mechanism to know about people’s old transactions, promoting awareness and tax compliance, the vice president said.
The department is also technologically equipped to reach out to individuals and ensure easy tax compliance, he said.
He was of the view that potential tax payers need to be informed about the advantages of being part of the formal economy.
“Tax collection potential remains to be untapped. We are a nation of 1.4 billion people, when we take the number of tax payers in relation to our population the number is not desirable,” Dhankhar said.
He said this number needs to go up. “This number has to go up not by invasive actions and not by coercive mechanism but by taking recourse to counselling and that I am sure you always undertake,” the Vice President said. (PTI)
Follow our WhatsApp channel
