Taxes are necessary, not tax officers

It is rather simplistic to assert that 92% of central indirect taxes flow into the treasury on their own volition and so we don't need so much work force only for the sake of remaining 8 %. For example, mora than 99 % people are law abiding and therefore can it be argued that we don't need so many police personnel. The fact is that voluntary compliance is also a result of the fact that there are taxmen. Even with so many taxmen, our cost of collection is one of the lowest in the world. There is certainly a need to increase the productivity of our taxmen and the productivity should not be measured merely by the figures of tax evasion detected; it should be measured with greater weightage by factors such as facilitating compliance by trade and industry, removing procedural irritants, timely alerting and educating them about the changes in law or rates etc etc. however it seems to be true that there are 'surplus' senior level positions now and that is a consequence of the typical Indian bureaucratic culture of creating posts at the senior levels not because they are functionally needed but to give promotions so as to maintain a degree of parity amongst more than a doze civil services.

Rakesh kumar 19/08/2016