Parthasarathi Shome, Chairman, Tax Administration Reforms Commission (TARC) of India has called for changing the `Respect all, Suspect all’ attitude of the Income Tax department.

Speaking on 'India: Tax Policy and Administration Experiences and Reforms' he emphasized the need to modernize the income tax department and empower tax officers with decision-making authority.

The talk had been organized by the Pune International Centre, a city-based think tank.

Tax departments needed to treat every taxpayer as a client and not as a tax evader, he emphasized. “We have been following the policy of ‘respect all, suspect all’ and we must change that,” Shome said, adding, “Our complex structure and a suspect all attitude is far away from the ideal practices.”

Calling Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Direct Tax Code (DTC) as the most important tax reforms, their implementation would enable paying of taxes to a single authority without any complications, he said.

Pointing out that current unhappiness over the way individual tax payers are taxed led to disputes, Shome averred that disputes between the tax payers and the IT authority were responsible for the growing unpaid taxes and the drop in the growth ratio. “Compared to foreign countries the rate of such disputes in India is extremely high,” he said.

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