Punjab to use satellite imagery to trace tax evaders
The department, in collaboration with the British government’s Department for International Development (DFID), has decided to take innovative measures under the Sub-national Governance programme (SNG2).
Under the ‘Track & Trace’ project of the provincial taxation department, satellite imagery will be utilised to trace hidden properties and vacant plots.
The system will trace and stop vehicles with outstanding token taxes at the entrances and exits of Lahore with the help of modern scanning machines, which were introduced under the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system.
The provincial excise department has also drafted an agreement for data-sharing to be signed by the excise departments of Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Islamabad, based on which tax payments for token taxes would be recognised and reported.
The excise authorities have decided to shift the mode of payment for new registration of vehicles and transfer of ownership to the ‘ePay’ application, as soon as the biometric system is launched.
With the help of the highly-sensitive satellites, high-resolution images of different areas will be obtained and linked to the MIS (Management Information System) data of the excise department, enabling it to know the number of properties and vacant plots included in the property tax net and those that are still hidden.
The Track and Trace project will enable the department to integrate the Geographical Information System (GIS) and the Management Information System (MIS) with the help of satellite images.
During a pilot test of the system, when satellite images of Lake City, Air Force and Izmir Housing Society in Lahore were matched with tax data, more than 4,000 vacant plots and buildings were found to be evading property taxes.
In its letters to the excise department, the Federal Board of Revenue has maintained that the excise department is currently collecting property tax from only 30 per cent of the rented buildings, which must be increased to 85 per cent.
The excise department has started conducting ground and satellite surveys as well as launched online property portals in different areas to assess the rates of house rents. Not only that, the department has also started considering an upward revision of the tax rates in the valuation table.
A pilot project on property tax is also in the works for Sahiwal, Narowal and Sargodha. The new system is expected to serve as a major help in cracking down on token tax evading vehicles as well.
At present, the department checks token tax by stopping all types of vehicles, which is not only cumbersome for citizens but also slows down the performance of the department.
Under the ANPR system, two excise teams will be deployed at the entrances and exits of Lahore. The first team will have the advanced infrared equipment with which it will scan the number plate of a vehicle. The number plate data will match the centralised data of the excise department. If the vehicle is a tax defaulter, the automated system will send a message to the excise team’s Android set parked a few hundred feet away from the first team, intimating the tax authority that the vehicle is a non-payer of token tax on which excise officials would stop the vehicle.
Significant progress has been made in data sharing with other provinces as well.
Reportedly, there are thousands of vehicles in other provinces that pay the token tax but when their owners arrive at the Punjab excise department to update the payment, the department does not recognise the taxes paid in the respective provinces as manual verification over there “is not reliable”.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 16th, 2020.