LAHORE: Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) has organised an awareness workshop regarding its project titled “Public Awareness and Advocacy About Dispute Resolution Mechanism of Federal Tax Ombudsman” for medium and small scale enterprises at a local hotel of Lahore.
M Siddique, Advisor (Implementation & Monitoring), shed light on the historical perspective of the ombudsman office. He gave detailed presentation about the working of the FTO office. He said at present, there are 150 ombudsman offices in the world.
In Pakistan, the ombudsman office was established in 1983 and in year 2000, an independent office of Federal Tax Ombudsman was established. He elaborated in detail the complaint filing procedure and other available facilities provided by the FTO office to aggrieved taxpayers. He said the mandate of FTO office is to ensure prompt and inexpensive redress of taxpayers’ genuine grievances against maladministration by the tax employees of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR)/Revenue Division, Government of Pakistan. He said an average 1500 complaints annually are currently being handled by the FTO offices across Pakistan.
Siddique also highlighted the success stories of the FTO office since its establishment in year 2000. He said the taxpayers can file their complaints by courier, by hand, online or through e-mail. He said the services of FTO offices are free of cost, citizens friendly and the complaints are decided in 60 days. He said Form-A is available on the website (www.fto.gov.pk) of the FTO on which taxpayers can lodge their complaints. The form can also be obtained from the FTO offices, besides its Islamabad secretariat, located in Lahore, Karachi, Quetta, Peshawar, Sukkur, Abbottabad, Multan and Faisalabad.
Muhammad Asif, Director General Administration FTO, said FTO is working to eliminate fear of traders so that they can freely lodge their complaints with the FTO offices located across Pakistan.
The traders gave useful feedback to the FTO team comprising DG Administration Muhammad Asif, Advisor Incharge Munir Qureshi and Advisor Muhammad Siddique. All Pakistan Anjuman-e-Taajran General Secretary Naeem Meer, Anjuman-e-Taajran President Ashraf Bhatti, Punjab Anjuman-e-Taajran President Mehboob Ali Sarki, Crockery Shah Alam Market Chairman Haji Farrukh Iqbal, Lahore Trade Alliance President Safdar Butt and others also addressed the event. The session was moderated by Ali Nasir, Media Manager, FTO Secretariat, Islamabad.
