KARACHI: Chief Commissioner Inland Revenue (IR) Corporate Tax Office (CTO) Dr. Aftab Imam has informed that in order to quickly process the Sales Tax Returns being submitted in huge quantities every month by the taxpayers, a state-of-the-art IDEA software has been introduced at the Inland Revenue Department where the pilot run was going on smoothly hence, it was being expected that this software will be fully launched in July 2022.
Speaking at a meeting during his visit to the Karachi Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Chief Commissioner invited KCCI’s delegation to visit IR department to witness the performance of IDEA software which would make things easier and help in dealing with the problems being faced by taxpayers in submitting sales tax refunds.
The meeting was attended by Chairman Businessmen Group Zubair Motiwala joined the meeting online via Zoom while Vice Chairman BMG Anjum Nisar, General Secretary BMG AQ Khalil, President KCCI Muhammad Idrees, Senior Vice President Abdul Rehman Naqi, Vice President Qazi Zahid Hussain, Chairman Special Committee for Small Traders Majeed Memon, Chairman GST/ SRB Subcommittee Hilal Ahmed Sheikh. KCCI Managing Committee Members and a large number of business community’s representatives attended the meeting.
Chief Commissioner further stated that although installation of Point of Sales (POS) machines was currently mandatory for bigger stores/ shops falling under tier-1 but eventually, every shopkeeper will have to get the POS machines installed at their premises which was the only way to ensure that all the taxes being generated from sales were directly being submitted to the national exchequer.
He informed that in order to improve the functioning of IR department, all the recruitments were now strictly being done purely on the basis of merit so that competent and hardworking workforce could be created which should facilitate the taxpayers instead of creating problems.
Chairman Businessmen Group & Former President KCCI Zubair Motiwala, who joined the meeting via Zoom, pointed out that many issues mostly pertaining to issuance of notices have been lying pending at numerous offices of the IR department which need to be resolved on priority. Huge number of notices including Withholding Tax Notices and Audit Notices were being issued to taxpayers without any justification which was a very serious issue hindering government’s ease of doing business policy, he said, and suggested that instead of seeking entire data and documentation from taxpayers, FBR should only collect information about any suspicious/ missing transactions without disturbing the entire flow.
He said that although taxpayers have been regularly submitting all the documentations on monthly basis yet the FBR officials without taking the already submitted documentation into consideration, demand the same documents again and any failure or delay in doing so creates a lot of problems for taxpayers who find themselves stuck up in a web of harassment. “To deal with these kinds of issues, it is really necessary to adopt state-of-the-art and completely flawless IT solutions as per international standards which would reduce human interaction and help in minimizing the incidents of harassment”, he added.
