LAHORE: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is playing vital role in strengthening national economy through proper monitoring and broadening of tax base. So for, the Regional Tax Office-II (RTO-II) is exclusively mentoring the filers to watch negative trends and fasten the move of tax collection to meet the target and enhance the tax collections.
This was stated by Zahoor Khan Wazir, Assistant Commissioner Regional Tax Office-II, during an exclusive interview with Customs Today.
He said that the government is taking serious steps to improve economy link, documentation of the economy, as the current taxation system is not par excellence and it should be improved and rampant corruption in society should be minimized if not totally eliminated.
Utilization of tax money for the betterment of common man may be a step forward to betterment of economy. The people in Pakistan do not want to pay taxes as they think that our money goes into corruption and not properly utilized for the welfare of the people, Zahoor told.
He said that if government properly uses taxes for the betterment of the general masses. So, tax collection very high and people will prefer to pay taxes with passion. In developed countries, taxation systems are much better but in Pakistan there are many flaws in the system which may be improved with little bit efforts.
Talking about the flaws in taxation system Zahoor said that, unfortunately, the economy in Pakistan is undocumented which is one of the main hurdles in proper collection of taxes, adding more, most people in Pakistan are not educated due to which they do not know the importance of tax collection and its use. Common people perception is that once if we file our return then we will be stuck up in a mess due non cooperative attitude of the department, he stated.
Adding further, Assistant Commissioner emphasized that tax matters are complex, so return filing is also difficult for a common man which makes the taxation system weak. In third world countries, the tax authorities are not that strong because most of the time the people at the helm of affairs are corrupt and not compliant tax payers. So, they make weak tax authorities and system deliberately for self interest, eventually countries go in the deficit.
Talking about jurisdiction, Zahoor Wazir mentioned that currently, he is collecting taxes from Builders, Developers, Contractors and now a days working on Additional charge of Lawyers, Consultants, Architects and Engineers and also collecting taxes from all these multi peoples.
Mentioning about taxpayers compliance rate Zahoor think it differs from CRTO or LTU. In company cases compliance rate is much better but as far as individual and AOP is concerned compliance rate is not that much better. But still I believe that if notice is properly served then there are maximum chances that taxpayer will appear and will sort out the issue.
