Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu today called for further simplifying the tax system to promote voluntary compliance and reduce litigation.

Appreciating the government’s efforts to do away with complex and tedious processes, he called for intensifying efforts toward creating a stable, user friendly and transparent tax regime in the country.

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Addressing the Valediction Ceremony of the 74th Batch of Indian Revenue Service (Income Tax) at the National Academy of Direct Taxes (NADT) at Nagpur, the Vice President said that technology can be a great enabler in the endeavour toward creating a transparent and taxpayer-friendly administration.

“Leveraging digital technology is crucial for financial inclusion, ease of service delivery and plugging leakages from various welfare schemes,” he added.

He said the country expects a high order of efficiency and integrity from all civil servants. The Vice President asked the officers to set a high benchmark, improve the system to make a positive difference in the lives of people.

“We are not content with the status quo. We want to convert our Swaraj into Suraj or good governance,” he stressed.

The Vice President said the Indian Revenue service played an important role in nation building through tax collections. He said the officers should demystify the tax laws and procedures so that tax compliance becomes the norm and citizens pay taxes on time, willingly and effortlessly.

Citing an analogy from Mahabharata, he said that a ruler should extract taxes from the people in the same way as honey bee extracts nectar from the flowers without harming the flower itself.

Terming effective tax administration as the bedrock of national development and one of the pillars of good governance, the Vice President underlined that tax collection needs to increase but it should be done in a transparent and user-friendly way, not in an arbitrary manner.

Stressing the need to minimise the adverse impact of taxation on taxpayers, he said, “if taxpayers continue to grow in their respective productive activities, both the national GDP and the revenue collections will continue to grow.”

Governor of Maharashtra Bhagat Singh Koshyari, Energy Minister of Maharashtra Nitin Raut, Chairman CBDT J B Mohapatra and senior officers were present.