ISLAMABAD: The policy board of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) will be finalized next week because the Senate has nominated Senator Saeed Ghani as member from the Senate to the board. The National Assembly had already nominated its member for the board some two years ago.
The Finance Ministry and the FBR had been holding discussions on the nature of the board since long and then moved a structural recommendations to both the houses of the parliament seeking their representations in the board.
Source told Customs Today that after thorough deliberations the Senate had moved the name of Senator Saeed Ghani to represent the Upper House of the parliament in the board.
“The functions of the policy board are to provide guidance in matters relating to the vision, mission and values of the FBR, and to provide policy guidelines in framing fiscal policy and in achieving goals and targets” the source added saying that policy board was required meet at least once in each quarter of a financial year.
The board is entitled with the obligations of analyzing the structure of taxes along with the implementations and impacts on the national economy. There had been proposals under considerations that only the minister for planning from the cabinet should be the member of the board whereas the rest of the board should consist of representatives of major stakeholders including the FPCCI, economists and lead economic institutions.
There has also been a proposal that the tax structure should be reformed to ensure that there is no multiple taxation by the province and the federal government. Appeals should be brought under the administrative control of Federal Ministry of Law and the appellate tribunal under the control of the high court of the respective jurisdiction.
The source further added that the policy board of Federal Board of Revenue was constituted through FBR (Amendment) Act 2011 in April, 2011. (c)
However, the source said that formal meetings of the policy board could not he held due to non-finalization of nominations of members of the Policy Board due to various reasons. FBR had taken up the matter with Prime Minister’s Office, Chairman, Senate and Speaker, National Assembly for nomination of members of the policy board, well in time.
