CAG should suggest measures to check tax leakages: FM

Concerned over revenue leakages, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today asked the government auditor CAG to suggest corrective measures for raising tax and non-tax receipts.

"...I would like the CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General) to analyse the areas where there are leakages in government revenue and recommend corrective measures to increase not only the tax but also the non-tax receipts," he said while addressing a conference to mark 150 years of the institution.

CAG, Mukherjee said, has a key role in verifying the effectiveness of revenue generation and collection as they are used to fund socio-economic and infrastructure development schemes.
    
The annual budget for the current fiscal stands at Rs 10 lakh crore, of which around Rs 6.82 lakh crore is expected to come from tax and non-tax revenues.
    
Pointing out that government was in the process of switching over to Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, Mukherjee said, "we would welcome the audit of inputs in this regard (by CAG) at appropriate time."
    
The CAG had earlier came out with a report on implementation of the Value Added Tax (VAT) regime.
    
GST will replace VAT besides subsuming other indirect levies like excise and service tax.