Taxes will be collected in just and fair manner: FM

Finance Ministry on Tuesday assured taxpayers that efforts would be made to end hostile relationships between officials and assesses and collect revenue in a "just and fair manner".

"Once the tax payer is confident that the relationship between a tax payer and officer is not a hostile relationship, you (tax officers) will find that more and more people have become complaint to tax laws," Finance Minister P Chidambaram said while addressing officials of Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) in New Delhi.

Chidambaram has been insisting that government needed to follow a non-adversarial tax administration to avoid litigations.

"We will stick to the fiscal targets that the government has fixed for us. We will collect revenues, but again in a just and fair manner,"

Revenue Secretary Sumit Bose said.

The Finance Ministry is under pressure to improve revenue collection to contain fiscal deficit to 5.3 per cent of GDP in the current financial year.

It is proposing reforms in the direct and indirect taxes. While on the direct taxes side it is working out a Direct Taxes Code (DTC), a bill for which is pending in Parliament, in case of indirect taxes, government is pursuing with the Goods and Service Tax (GST).

Chidambaram also underlined the need for moving ahead on the path of replacing "heavy handed" tax administration with technology driven regime.

Transition from heavy handed tax administration to a technology driven tax administration cannot be smooth, he said, adding, "but we cannot abandon that path".

"As we go forward we should rely more on technology, non-intrusive intelligence gathering, and a non-adversarial tax administration," he said.