Remove fear of harassment among taxpayers, PM tells officials

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Thursday, asked the tax officials to remove fear of harassment from the minds of taxpayers and focus on five pillars of administration — revenue, accountability, probity, information and digitisation (RAPID).

Inaugurating the two-day Rajasva Gyan Sangam here, Prime Minister asked the officials to "move towards digitisation" in a bid to make tax administration better and efficient and work towards bridging the "trust deficit".

Modi also suggested that officials should endeavour to remove "fear of harassment" from the minds of assesses and emphasised that their behaviour should be "soft and sober", Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said while briefing reporters about the meeting.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and senior tax administrators of Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) are participating in the two-day annual conference.

Prime Minister also underlined the need for increasing the number of tax payers to 10 crore from 5.43 crore, at present.