Taxing With Love - What Chetan Bhagat told Taxmen

By Vijay Kumar

THE recent conference of Chief and Principal Commissioners of CBEC and CBDT was addressed by Chetan Bhagat on ‘Taxing With Love'. He suggested 10 ways to tax with love.

10 ways to tax with Love:

1. Treating the taxpayer as a customer: The current tax department mentality is to act like the police and approach the taxpayer as a criminal, unless proved otherwise.

2. Simplify forms: The government has tried but sadly failed to do this.

3. A good, robust and modern website: India is the land of IT companies. Hire a good company to revamp the customer interface.

4. Good quality paper:. Current tax department communication seems from the 1980s, with cheap quality super thin sheets and envelopes, and poor quality black and white printing.

5. Simpler nomenclature:. Names like ITR4 and 26AS intimidate people. Sit down one day and rename and reorganise all the forms that have been amended and become complicated in nomenclature over the years.

6. Say thanks and mean it: People who pay taxes are nation builders. Seeing rich people as thieves is a throwback to evil landlord and poor peasant movies of the 1970s.

7. Don't send scary letters. The department officials are under pressure to increase revenue. However, you cannot scare taxpayers.

8. Have tax guidance centres. People should be able to go somewhere and figure out how to do their taxes, which doesn't require a private advisor.

9. Share macro data. Without giving individual details, macro data should be shared with the public to enable us to understand how tax collections are going.

10. Share where the tax money was used. Of course, funds are amalgamated at the top. However, it would be nice to hear that your tax last year helped make this road.

It seems after hearing him out, a smart Commissioner asked, "Tax collection is a negative job. How can it be sugar coated? How to tax with love?"