SIALKOT: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has given a special recovery target of Rs 2 billion to the Gujranwala Regional Tax Office for the month of June, advising the officials concerned to ensure timely achievement of this recovery target as well.
The FBR has fixed a recovery target of Rs 1.5 billion as income tax and Rs 950 million as sales tax for this month.
It is the biggest ever recovery target given by the FBR to the Regional Tax Office in the history of Gujranwala, due to which the FBR officials concerned and local traders, industrialist, exporters and importers are much perturbed.
To meet this recovery target of Rs 2 billion, the FBR has also frozen the bank accounts of several chronic defaulters, including big industrialists and exporters, and the FBR was reportedly drawing big amounts from these bank accounts to recover their arrears.
In May 2015, the Gujranwala Regional Tax Directorate had collected Rs 1.40 billion from tax defaulters, which was Rs 100 million less than the fixed official recovery target of Rs 1.50 billion.
Senior officials of the FBR have also been directed by the authorities to make some effective measures to ensure early recovery of taxes from all the defaulting government departments and private institutions.
The FBR has constituted as many as 13 special recovery teams led by senior FBR officials to ensure early recovery in this regard.
The FBR has also issued final recovery notices to all those who purchased costly plots and luxury vehicles in Gujranwala region, asking them to ensure early clearance of their prolonged pending arrears as well.
On the other hand, the FBR is continuing the deputation of senior FBR officials in all big factories in Gujranwala Division’s all the six: Sialkot, Narowal, Gujrat, Mandi Bahauddin, Hafizabad and Gujranwala districts, who are monitoring all the activities of these factories, especially checking the sales and production.
Meanwhile, the FBR had already imposed 40-B Act in Gujranwala Region’s all the six districts, which would continue until June 30, 2015. The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has imposed 40-B Act in Gujranwala Region for a period of a month before the end of the running fiscal year to ensure the achievement of tax recovery.
The Gujranwala Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) has expressed grave concern over this step by the Regional Tax Office and has warned the authorities of locking up their factories if senior FBR officials being deputed at their factories were not called back.
The GCCI also warned that Gujranwala business community would come out on the roads to lodge a strong protest against deputation of the FBR officials at the factories.
GCCI President Khawaja Khalid Hassan, Senior Vice President Kashif A Aziz and Vice President Babu Imtiaz have expressed grave concern over the promulgation of 40-B Act in Gujranwala till June 30 and deputation of the senior FBR officials in the defaulting factories in the region.
They said that the deputation of FBR officials in factories would open new ways of corruption, as the FBR officials would try become the owners of the factories after being deputed there. They said that the persisting energy crisis has already pushed the businessmen into a closed street.
They said that deputation of the FBR officials in the Gujranwala factories has already created panic among the Gujranwala business community. The GCCI officials said that they had ever been urging the FBR to bring maximum new people in the tax net, but instead of finding new taxpayers, the FBR officials were sucking the blood from the bodies of the old taxpayers.
