Major reshuffle in top FBR positions

Govt issues notification for transfer and posting of 15 officers.

ISLAMABAD: The government, in a shake-up of almost the entire top bureaucracy in the Federal Board of Revenue, has reshuffled over a dozen Grade-21 officers in one go, including the member operation for domestic taxes.

The notification of transfers and postings of 14 Grade-21 officers and one Grade-20 officer was issued on Wednesday.

The changes at the top level in Islamabad and at regional tax offices came only a few days after the appointment of Ansar Javed as FBR Chairman and Shahid Hussain Jatoi as Member Administration.

The government has transferred Muhammad Raza Baqir, who was serving as Member Inland Revenue Operations, and posted him as Chief Commissioner IR Regional Tax Office (RTO-II) Lahore.

Baqir had recently been appointed member operations and took certain corrective administrative measures to boost declining tax revenues.



In one of the steps, he changed the mode of collecting sales tax on mobile phones from activation stage, a method that became obsolete a decade ago and is now causing revenue slippages, to import stage. Though the move was not received well, particularly by cellphone dealers, it is expected to generate annually Rs5 billion in taxes.

The member inland revenue is responsible for collection of income tax, sales tax and excise duty.

Mustafa Ashraf, who was serving as Chief Commissioner RTO-II, has been brought back in FBR headquarters as Member IR Operations. He had served as Member Audit and had restarted an audit exercise, but it was again challenged in the court.

The government has given additional charge of Member Tax Policy to Muhammad Aqil Usman, who is also Member Legal. The post of Member Policy was created in September 2012 to accommodate Asrar Raouf after retirement. However, Raouf’s contract was revoked earlier this month.

There are divergent views in the FBR over separation of policy and operational functions of inland revenue as a majority want both the functions should be under one head.

Riffat Shaheen Qazi has been appointed Member Facilitation and Taxpayers Education (FATE) while her predecessor Aftab Ahmad has been posted as Chief Commissioner RTO, Rawalpindi.

Within days, the FBR has reversed its decision of appointing Ijaz Hussain Shah as member (without a portfolio) and appointed him as Director General of Directorate General of Intelligence and Investigation IR.

Shaista Abbas, who was serving as DG Intelligence, has been transferred and posted as Chief Commissioner RTO-III, Karachi.

Sameera Yasin, who was serving as DG of Directorate General of Internal Audit, has been transferred and posted as DG Directorate General of Training and Research. Raana Ahmad, Commissioner IR RTO Rawalpindi, has been posted as DG of Directorate General of Internal Audit.

Shafqat Mahmood has been posted as DG of CREST, Lahore, a project recently launched by former FBR chairman Ali Arshad Hakeem to stop illegal sales tax refunds. Mahmood was earlier serving as Chief Commissioner RTO, Lahore.

Mian Saeed Iqbal, Commissioner RTO Islamabad, has been posted as Chief Commissioner IR RTO Peshawar.

Chaudhry Safdar Hussain, Member IR, has been posted as Chief Commissioner RTO Lahore and Abdul Nasir Butt, Chief Commissioner RTO-III Karachi, has been brought in the FBR as member without specifying his post.

Qaisar Iqbal, the only Grade-20 officer who was serving as FATE chief, has been made Chief of Administration FBR.

The FBR also appointed Raana Seerat as Project Director of Tax Administration Reforms Project-II in preparation to get another loan of $300 million from the World Bank.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 18^th, 2013.

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