Revenue branch clerks allegedly helping evade property tax

They skirted review process and reduced interim tax as per wishes of applicants

RAWALPINDI: Clerks in the Rawalpindi Cantonment Board (RCB) have been found to cause heavy financial losses to the cantonment board by allowing people to evade the due property tax by manipulating an assessment process, The Express Tribune has learnt.

Explaining the crux of the corrupt practices, well-placed sources said that if a resident objects to the amount of property tax recommended by the cantonment board after an interim assessment, the case is referred to the assessment committee via RCB’s Additional Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Thereafter, he added, the applicant is summoned to attend a meeting of the assessment committee where the statements of citizen and officials of the tax branch involved in the case are recorded. The committee decides on whether to uphold the assessed amount or to decrease it as per the objection after reviewing the records and examining current market rates.

However, in the particular case where the corrupt practice was uncovered, clerks from the revenue branch allegedly skirted the process and arbitrarily lowered the interim tax as desired by the related applicants.

The clerks then allegedly managed to obtain signatures of the assessment committee’s chairman, updated the revised amount in the system and then issued tax bills to the applicants.

The alleged malpractice of clerks was discovered when an audit team pointed out that the due assessment process had been bypassed in a particular after which an inquiry was launched.

While probing into the case, officials discovered that there were more than a hundred cases where the same practice had been repeated.

Following this, the audit teams summoned records of the related cases while they would issue their findings after inspecting all records.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 9^th, 2019.