ISLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has updated Computerized Risk-based Evaluation of Sales Tax (CREST), a system that checks information in monthly returns, import, export data and cross matches for every registered person.
The CREST system, which has in-built capacity to verify the veracity of reply received from the registered person, was updated till October 5, 2017.
The CREST system is designed for Sales Tax and is based on declarations and covers areas like purchases including input tax adjustment of buyers and suppliers. It also covers Zero-Rated Sales to registered person with non-active ATL or blacklisted or suspended Sales Tax Registration Numbers (STRNs) and Section 8B-exemption-claims against qualifying criteria per notification.
The system also covers exports claim in returns which do not match with customs export data and commercial imports by non-manufactures who also do not show value addition on imports. The system allows faster and timely sending of discrepancy-alerts to taxpayers.
CREST also provides taxpayers an IT system that they can use in order to reply to the CREST discrepancy-alerts without taxpayer needing to visit the tax offices. CREST use by taxpayers is an optional-facility and taxpayers can ignore it and make an in-person visit to tax office to explain his position regarding the discrepancy-alert.
