FM to ask officials to make plan for meeting tax targets

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will ask officials to make an action plan to meet tax targets when he addresses annual conference of chief commissioners and directors general of customs, central excise and service tax on Monday.

The finance ministry said the main focus of the conference would be on challenges in achieving revenue targets set for indirect taxes for 2014-15. The discussions have been planned on various areas of revenue augmentation — revenue analysis, scrutiny of returns submitted by assessees, audit, enforcement measures, dispute resolution and recovery of tax arrears among others.

There will be discussions on the recommendations contained in the First Report of Tax Administration Reforms Commission (TARC), goods and services  tax (GST) and GSTN, budgetary changes and policy initiatives among others.

“Discussions on emerging challenges and opportunities in indirect tax administration would also form an important part of the two-day conference. The topics included in this segment are leveraging IT for revenue augmentation, implementation issues on cadre restructuring, budgeting and infrastructure, national training policy 2012: competency gaps, agreements of trade facilitation and management of vigilance cases and preventive vigilance among others,” the statement said. Saumitra Chaudhuri, former member, Planning Commission, will deliver the third BN Banerjee Memorial Lecture, while Prajapati Trivedi, secretary (PMD), Cabinet Secretariat, will deliver a lecture on frontiers of new public management.