Fruits of restructuring: Tax officers are now competent, says FBR chief
Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Chairman Salman Siddique has said that after the restructuring of FBR, all regional chiefs have become competent enough to resolve the day-to-day issues faced by businessmen and traders.
Speaking at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) on Saturday, he said the regional chiefs of tax offices had been directed to constitute committees in collaboration with the chambers, trade bodies and other stakeholders to address pressing issues on priority. He asked the LCCI to give its nominations for the committees.
He said all major issues like CNIC condition for traders, under-invoicing and sales tax problems would be resolved in consultation with the business community.
He said the FBR was also formulating a core policy which would be finalised by the end of next month. In recent months, this is the second meeting of the FBR with business chambers to institutionalise contacts with the stakeholders. The first one was held with the Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
He said earlier it was a routine practice for the FBR to start receiving budget proposals in March, but this year the process had been initiated with these meetings and it would be completed by March.
According to Siddique, revenue shortfall forced the country to go for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme as out of total tax collection of Rs1,558 billion, Rs750 billion went to debt servicing and Rs441 billion was spent on defence matters. One per cent was kept by the FBR on account of tax collection. In addition to this, after the passage of National Finance Commission Award, 60 per cent of revenues directly went to provinces that left the government with no option but to resort to borrowing, he pointed out.
He said with the help of National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) and 19 other sources, 120,000 new potential taxpayers had been identified. They have been served with notices, following which 22,000 have filed income tax returns.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 23rd, 2011.
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Amazing: On 22 March 2011 FBR claimed that they were issuing notices to 700,000 potential tax payers based on NADRA information. Now FBR has reduced the number to 120,000. What happened to 580,000 potential tax payers?. Can the Chairman FBR please explain this.? The exact quote reported in newspapers of 22 March 2011 was: “The FBR has started issuing notices to 0.7 million such non-taxpayers, who are not paying taxes despite well-to-do, and according to the law they have to submit their returns within thirty days period”
OK.Let us put your tax officers to test.
Let your Members FBR fill out Return of Income for Tax Year 2011 of a Public quoted company.Let us time it and have independent body like Tax Bar or ICAP proctor the exercise.
OR
Let the officers of tax officers FBR take the taxation paper of ICAP and let us see how many of them pass.
We will be praying for them because tax payers money has been spent on their capacity building.
Really ??? Ignorance is Bliss.