FM Arun Jaitley to inaugurate 2-day tax conference on August 24

New Delhi: Top indirect tax officials will meet here for two days from Monday to discuss issues related to taxpayers services, ease of doing business, GST and Centre’s ‘Make in India’ drive.

The Finance Minister will inaugurate the Annual Conference of the Chief Commissioners and Directors General of Customs, Central Excise and Service Tax (CBEC) where he will deliver a key note address.

“This year’s Conference will focus on emerging areas such as taxpayers services, ease of doing business, Make in India and Goods and Services Tax,” the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

The Year 2015 has been declared by CBEC as the ‘Year of Tax Payers Services’.

As part of the CBEC initiative in consultation with FICCI and KPMG, conducted an independent survey among taxpayers and the results will be shared and discussed in the conference, the release said.

“Other new initiatives taken by CBEC in the area of simplifying procedures, promoting ease of doing business, facilitating trade, import and export and use of information technology to re-engineer business processes will also form part of the discussions with the Chief Commissioners,” it added.

As per the schedule, the conference will commence with revenue analysis and strategies to achieve the Budget Estimates for the current Financial Year.

Theme based interactive sessions with the Chief Commissioners will focus on areas such as on ‘Infrastructure and HRD issues’, ‘Capacity Building’, ‘Taxpayers Services’, ‘Ease of Doing Business’, and ‘MIS System’.

The second day of the conference (August 25) will focus on preparations for roll out of GST / GSTN.

The Chief Commissioners will make a presentation on their vision of CBEC.

Shaktikanta Das, Revenue Secretary, Chairman and Members, CBEC and senior officers of the Ministry of Finance will also participate.

Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog Arvind Panagariya will deliver the 4th B N Banerji Lecture on the first day, while Minister of State (Finance) Jayant Sinha will address the Valedictory Session.

Indirect tax revenue collection jumped over 37% to over Rs 2.1 lakh crore during April-July period of current fiscal, on the back of higher excise collections.

This is an achievement of 32.6% of the target fixed for BE 2015-16 Rs 64,6267 crore.

PTI