INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Mr Goyal was earlier this week given the additional charge of Finance Ministry.Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday asked tax officers to
refrain from being overzealous in tax administration, while appealing the industry to conduct business ethically
Addressing the Central Board of Indirect Taxes (CBIC) officers on the occasion of International Customs Day, Mr Goyal asked the tax officers
to consider crowdsourcing of feedback from stakeholders as to what more could be done towards adopting a taxpayer friendly approach by the
department.Mr Goyal, who was earlier this week given the additional charge of Finance Ministry, asked the taxmen to trust the customers with
a great degree of intelligence, while adopting a customer friendly approach."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
No revenue should be lost," he said.The government in last few years has made an "honest attempt" to make the tax administration taxpayer
friendly, and worked towards continuously bringing down tax rates, and make compliance easier."At this stage, I can appeal to the business
community that it is time to do business ethically and straight
Those days are gone when there was era of very high taxes, very high import duties, very high indirect and direct taxes, which caused people
to look at different avenues to skip taxes," Mr Goyal said.Stating that actions of a few people causes agony to a much larger set of people,
the Minister said, it is not that every businessman is cheating on taxes.He also emphasised that it is not always that government
bureaucrats or people in power, all are engaged in wrongdoing but it is the "few black sheep", who cause the generalisation in the society
or in the public mind that things are not going right, he said."Very often in the over enthusiasm of tax administration, we become
overzealous also and that causes a lot of agony, particularly to the honest taxpayer."Similarly, when people talk about administration of
different departments of the government, bureaucracy, it''s very unfortunate that all are brushed in the same language," Mr Goyal
said.Asking the tax officers to collectively recognise responsibility, Mr Goyal said "each one of us as an individual represents 80,000
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