Lhakpa Quendren

As the tax filing season approaches, the Department of Revenue and Customs (DRC) has come under mounting pressure with income tax officials quitting their jobs in bulk.

This year alone, 52 income tax officials resigned voluntarily and more could follow. Eleven officials superannuated from the service.

DRC said that the department’s attrition reflects the national trend.

The department is taking a multi-pronged approach to make do with fewer employees.

The department said it would remove redundancy within the organization through business process reviews. This includes multi-tasking to ensure that services are delivered without any disruption within the standard Turn-Around-Time (TAT).




According to the department, employees are shouldering extra responsibilities.

Contract employees and interns are expected to address the manpower shortage in the department. All accounts services are being clustered together in the form of the Cluster Finance Service (CFS).

“The finance ministry in consultation with the Royal Civil Service Commission will re-deploy excess accounts personnel from the CFS to the DRC to fill the gap to ensure uninterrupted service delivery,” said the department.   

Further to that, the deployment of 20 Post-Graduate Diploma in Financial Management (PGDFM) graduates would ensure the department’s prompt service delivery.




Long-term solution?

The department is looking at digitalisation as one of the solutions to achieve efficiency and effectiveness.

The focus on building and deepening competencies of human resources would continue to build a highly skilled and efficient workforce, according to the department.

DRC will also focus on grooming young leaders to create a pipeline of leaders for various functions to ensure an effective succession plan is in place.

The average attrition rate at DRC over the 5 years – from 2018 to 2022 – has been 12.2 percent, including superannuation and death.