Government Tax Collection Drive Begins
Government Tax Collection Drive Begins: The government’s drive to broaden the tax base by hooking big fish may fail to yield results as it has issued nearly 340 notices to potential dodgers without doing proper profiling of cases and without empowering the relevant directorate.
These notices have been issued by the Directorate General of Broadening of Tax Base wing of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). But the wing has a presence in only three cities and its mandate is limited to unregistered persons, according to official sources.
There are over three million registered persons who are still non-filers of the income tax returns. The wing cannot go after them. The FBR’s operations wing is responsible to go after these registered people but its workforce is preoccupied with the key function of achieving the monthly revenue collection targets.
A significant majority of the identified High Net Worth individuals belong to areas that do not fall under the federal government’s tax jurisdictions. For instance, out of 220 identified cases picked for sending notices in the second badge, about 75 reside in Azad Jammu & Kashmir and tax exempted federally and provincial administrated tribal areas.
Like the Panama Papers episode, the tax notices have again been sent on the basis of incomplete information. The notices have been sent to addresses like ‘Aziz Shaheed Road’, without mentioning home or street address.
The FBR on Monday did not inform Finance Minister Asad Umar about these operational difficulties during his maiden visit to FBR headquarters. The FBR’s spokesman was not available for comments.
As of October 10, only 482,000 people filed their income tax returns for the income earned in the last fiscal year. The poor show forces the FBR to give two months extension in the date of filing.
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