Centre ‘retires’ 33 tax staff for their non-performance

The finance ministry said on Thursday that it has prematurely retired 33 officers of the revenue services, including seven Group ‘A’ officers, citing their non-performance for the first-time ever.

Further, 72 officials have been dismissed including six group ‘A’ officers, in other departmental or disciplinary actions in the last two years.

“There is a general perception that no action is taken against the defaulting tax officials for their non-performance as well as in case of harassing the tax assesses among others,” said the finance ministry.

It said that the present government has taken various steps to change this perception following the principle of good governance. “After the present government took over two years back, it has taken strict action against such revenue officers/officials in order to fix their accountability,” said the finance ministry.

The government has been taking a number of steps to prevent the harassment of the tax payers.

In order to prevent harassment of tax payers, the performance of income-tax officials is now being judged based on their quality of assessments and pace of disposal.

In January, the income-tax department had said that it had modified the Annual Performance Appraisal Report (APAR) of assessing officers (income tax officers as well as assistant commissioners/deputy commissioners of income tax) to bring about greater accountability in assessment functions. “In the revised format, the performance of the assessing officers will also be specifically measured for quality of assessment, the pace of disposal, and efforts made towards widening of tax base,” it had said.

It had said that with these changes the assessing officers will be more conscious of their accountability for the quality of their assessment orders and the tax demanded.