Be humane in dealing with taxpayers: Pranab

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has asked taxmen to be “humane” when dealing with taxpayers, as he felt being considerate and treating people with respect helped in improving tax collections.

“... (Mukherjee) has asked Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officials to consider taxpayers as important stakeholders in nation building and to administer taxes with a humane approach,” an official statement said today.

The finance minister was addressing the sixty-third batch of IRS trainees last evening, it said.

“Mukherjee pointed out that the shift in policy, whereby taxpayers were not seen as adversaries, had resulted in a significant growth in tax collection during the past decade,” the statement said.

He asked trainee officers to imbibe the approach in their daily working. Direct tax collections have risen 10-fold during the past decade. Mukherjee also pointed out that the share of direct taxes was more than 55 per cent now.

He reminded the officials that it was due to increased tax buoyancy and collection efforts of the Revenue Departments that the government was able to waive off farmers’ loans amounting to Rs 71,000 crore.