ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue has collected approximately Rs100 million from over 25,000 unregistered persons who received notices under the broadening tax base (BTB) exercise.
The FBR issued over 81,000 notices to undocumented persons under the BTB exercise with only 25,000 actually received by the taxpayers’ actually resident in the available residential/business addresses. The remaining are under process of being served through IR officers or courier companies/Pakistan post.
The FBR has yet to compile updated data of taxes collected along with returns filed by new taxpayers but a guesstimate is approximately Rs100 million. The figure is not final and is estimated on the basis of served notices across the country.
According to the FBR official, the exercise of documentation in 2011 was more productive relative to the current BTB campaign. The major reason for success of the old exercise was that notices were physically served through the officers of the Regional Tax Offices (RTOs). The centralised system of issuing notices to tax evaders has not been a very successful experiment, they added.
When the centralised system was introduced for BTB exercise, it was argued that the FBR would take the decision for the issuance of central notices instead of rendering these notices to field offices as they did not want to share raw data with field offices to avoid human interaction of tax officials with the taxpayers. The FBR developed a software device which would generate second notices to non filers. The software has been communicated to the field formations to start second phase of issuance of notices to potential taxpayers.
