Excise and Taxation : Proposal to automate vehicle records under deliberation

Suggestions include registration of vehicles at dealerships, maintenance of vehicle records by owners’ names.

LAHORE:

A provincial government committee is looking into a proposal to reform the registration process for vehicles by registering vehicle owners, rather than vehicles, with the Excise and Taxation Department, The Express Tribune has learnt.

Other suggestions under consideration are automation of the registration process and registration of vehicle dealerships across the province.

A final decision on whether or not the proposed reforms will be implemented will be taken following a committee’s report on their financial and legal consequences. The committee headed by Excise and Taxation Minister Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman was asked on Tuesday to submit the report within a week. Other members of the committee are the Punjab Information Technology Board chairman, the home secretary, the law and finance secretaries, the additional inspector general (Traffic), the capital city police officer, the chief traffic officer, and members from the Special Monitoring Unit (SMU) and the advisor to the chief minister on traffic reforms.

SMU senior member (law and order) Salman Sufi said that under the first suggestion, the E&T Department would register vehicles owners, and not vehicles. A person may own any number of vehicles. The E&T Department will keep the records of vehicle registration number by the owners’ names. The record of the vehicles already registered with the E&T Department could be re-tabulated by the owners’ names once the proposed reform is enacted.

In the first phase of the implementation of the proposed reform, a person would not be allowed to transfer the registration number for a particular vehicle to another once it is sold. The said number will be cancelled, regardless of whether or not the vehicle is replaced with another. In the second phase, if the owner replaced a vehicle with another they would be allowed to transfer the registration number to the new vehicle.

The registration booklet issued to vehicle owners will be replaced with an automated registration card (ARC) under the second proposed reform.

Wardens could use an automated card reader to record violation of traffic rules by drivers against their record on the E&T database.

An ARC would carry all details of a particular vehicle, including the owners’ national identity card number, token tax payment record. The ARC could also be used at automated teller machines to pay token tax.

The E&T Department also plans to start registering vehicle dealerships across the province. Under the plan, the registration process of a vehicle with the E&T Department will start at the dealerships as well.

Registered dealers will be allotted a list of numbers so that they could register purchasers on behalf of the E&T department.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9^th, 2015.