'What’s so saral about Saral', said new Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, interrupting the 30-slide presentation made by the revenue department to him on his first day in office. ‘Despite filing returns for over 30 years, I still can’t fill the Saral form myself’, he said irately. Better administration and tax payer services has to be the department’s top priority, the FM told the team lead by secretary S. Narayan.And Singh is in no mood to give his ministry a lot of time to correct the ‘public image’ of the finance ministry which is carried by the taxman. He has given officials two weeks’ time to come with solutions to improve the public face of tax collections.Since his predecessor was perceived to have alienated the middle classes by imposing hefty taxes, Singh made it clear this is not the route he wishes to take. He told officials to ‘stop policing the common man and increase their own efficiency.’Officials of the ministry who were upbeat with the revenue collections during the first quarter of the current year got another rude shock when they were asked not throw targets, achievements and numbers at the new minister during the briefing. Completely unimpressed by these numbers he turned around and said that they should be concentrating on devising ways in which to satisfy the demands of taxpayers—be it on refunds, replies on tax scrutiny or any other such dealings—in one visit rather than having them make umpteen rounds.Ironically, while talking of toning up tax administration, the presentation said the Central Economic Intelligence Bureau (CEIB) would be strengthened. Yet, just a few months ago, the same revenue department shunted out CEIB official Kailash Sethi whose phone-taps resulted in the arrest of top tax man B. P. Verma and chief excise commissioner Someshwar Mishra.The presentation said that one of the ministry’s top priorities would be to get the Prevention of Money Laundering Bill, 1999 passed by the Rajya Sabha.Discussions were also held on setting up a Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) to be set up as a nodal agency for collection and dissemination of information on financial transactions with a focus of money laundering.Based on the discussions during this first briefing, the transfer of the Narcotics Control Bureau to the Ministry of Home Affairs is also on the cards—this had been recommended by the Group of Ministers on national security. Discussions on implementing VAT (Value Added Tax) by April 1, 2003 were also held.
