FM to inaugurate annual conference of top I-T officials on Mon

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will inaugurate the 31st annual conference of top Income Tax (I-T) commissioners here on Monday.
The main focus during the two-day annual conference would be non-adversarial tax regime, expeditious settlement of tax payer's grievances and significant expansion of tax base, the Finance Ministry said in a statement.
The participants will deliberate on the strategies to achieve the goals of department in these areas and for augmentation of revenue, matters pertaining to Income Tax investigations and issues relating to human resource development, among others, it added.
Direct tax collection target for the current fiscal year has been fixed at Rs 7,97,995 crore, 14 per cent higher than the actual collection of Rs 6,95,988 crore in 2014-15 fiscal.

Besides, various strategies for revenue augmentation, including to augment Advance Tax, TDS collections, regular assessment, tax collections, self assessment tax, and dividend distribution tax, among others, will also be discussed during the two-day conference, the statement said.
The participants will also be addressed by NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya and Chairman and Managing Director of Bharat Forge Ltd Babasaheb Neelkanth Kalyani.

Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha, Revenue Secretary Shaktikanta Das, and senior officials of Income Tax department, including Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Chairperson Anita Kapur will also attend the conference.
The conference will provide an opportunity to senior officers of the Income Tax Department to brainstorm and firm-up their approach with regard to priority concerns of the department, the statement said.

The environment so created is expected to remove barriers to compliance and lead to significant increase in the number of tax payers, it added.