ISLAMABAD:
Tax authorities have brushed aside allegations of fresh figure fudging and said after learning lessons from a controversy over doctoring of tax collection data in June the government has made the system foolproof and there was no room for discrepancy.
Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Chairman Salman Siddique said since July the government has introduced an online cash reporting system which is linked with the State Bank of Pakistan and the National Bank that leaves no space for doctoring the figures.
He said these provisional figures are reconciled with the accounting system with a lag of one month. “Except for minor adjustments of less than a billion rupees, the figures of the cash reporting system and the accounting system match up to 98 to 99 per cent,” he added.
Citing an example, Siddique said the FBR reported monthly collection of Rs131 billion on November 30 on the basis of cash reporting system while the reconciled figure was Rs131.8 billion, only Rs831 million higher than the provisional figure.
A day ago, Dawn newspaper reported that the FBR has once again fudged the tax figures and over-reported the collection by Rs6 billon for five months (July-November). The report said due to the wrong figures the FBR was not releasing reconciled data.
For the year 2011-12, the government has set tax collection target at Rs1,952 billion.
Siddique said according to the online system, Rs173 billion in taxes have been collected in December so far and expressed hope that the figure would go above Rs200 billion by month-end.
He said the FBR would start a desk audit of all corporate taxpayers from January, adding corporations have been allowed to pay the outstanding flood surcharge through adjustments.
After last year’s floods, the government had imposed flood surcharge at 15 per cent of the payable income tax.
However, big companies disputed the levy which led to delay in payments. The FBR expects to collect Rs20 billion on this account. It has already bagged Rs11 billion from the salaried class and small businesses.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 31st, 2011.
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FBR will have to return the Flood Surcharge.The SRO has been declared illegal by Islamabad High Court.
Does FBR realise that in large number of cases, due to prorating,refunds will have to be paid?>