Auditor general not to contact taxpayers directly

The auditor general of Pakistan has been stopped from contacting taxpayers directly by the FBR.

ISLAMABAD: The auditor general of Pakistan has been stopped from contacting taxpayers directly by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). Furthermore, the Auditor General can no longer conduct raids for the purpose of obtaining tax records.

According to the FBR, all tax records can now be electronically retrieved by the auditor general’s office.

An FBR official said that the issue was discussed between the auditor general’s office and the FBR during a high-level meeting between the two bodies. He added that the two delegations discussed matters of legal importance in detail, which included the availability of General Sales Tax (GST) records.

It has been learnt that the auditor general was also briefed about the tax audit monitoring system, the risk base auditing system and the business intelligence system during the meeting.

Sources added that the FBR possesses records of all taxpayers in these systems and hence can present the tax records of any individual to the auditor general.

However, the delegation representing the auditor general disputed that due to data integration issues, the FBR does not have a complete electronic record of taxpayers, sources said. The FBR assured the Auditor General that all manual tax records would be available to the auditor general upon request.

The meeting ended with the agreement that more needs to be done to establish a suitable mechanism for access to both electronic and manual tax records by the auditor general.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 29^th, 2010.