ISLAMABAD: Director-General Intelligence and Investigation Inland Revenue Haroon Tareen has said that his department successfully detected Rs 54 billion tax evasion during one year.
Talking to Customs Today in his office, he said that a stern action should be taken against those people, who found involved in submission of fake tax returns. He said that tax evasion was increasing with the passage of time. He said that in USA, tax evasion is a punishable act, adding that parliament should also pass a bill to curb money laundering. He said that there was no truth in statements that the customs officials were misusing their authority. Rather, the officials are working according to the rules and regulations, he added. He said that “our directorate is working with 22 officials and all the officials are working within their limits and legally, but on the other hand we are facing shortage of staff issue.” He said that “we are working with limited staff and trying to meet the targets.”
He clarified that we provided full authorities to concerned officials to curb tax evasion and asked them to take effective measures in this regard. He said that he himself supervise the whole performance of his officials and if he founds any officials involved in misusing of his authorities he himself draft the charge sheet against those officials. He said he transferred some officials from his department who were found involved in misusing their authority.
Haroon Tareen said our team is comprised of honest and dedicated officials and we are treating each other like family members. He said if any staff members made some mistakes in official work he always tried to guide them instead of discourage them. He said that I always follow the policy of merit on my official assignments and ignores all kind of pressure in performance of my official duties. He further said that he allowed concessions to others according to rules and regulations.
Replying to a question he said that we should introduce tax culture in our society. He said some businessmen who are earning in billions but avoiding to pay a single penny as tax. He said recently we arrested a businessmen who was involved in tax evasion. The particular businessman gifted a BMW to his son on complition of his A level examination.
He said we assigned all the powers to commissioners to collect and generate revenue and they have reasonable force of enforcement also. Haroon Tareen said that we are not authorized to collect revenue, we only deduct tax evasion and forward reference to concerned authorities.
