ISLAMABAD: Receivables of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) amounting to Rs 51546.82 million are lying pending due to the sub-judice nature of cases.
Actually due to limited available human resources have marooned the revenue collection performance of FBR in the recent years; however, the current FBR leadership has taken measures to speed up the prosecution of cases worth millions of rupees with the courts. In last five months, the FBR has separated the customs department from the legal department for vigorous persuasion of the cases for their early resolution.
A official source at FBR told Customs Today that audit pinpointed 19 objection related paras of the Inland Revenue for the fiscal year 2016-17 and these paras involve some Rs51546.82 million.
On this issue, the source said that FBR had moved to the Finance Ministry to get the prescribed criterion for hiring of counsels and lawyers with special plea to authorize the chairman FBR to hire a lawyer with higher fee than one million rupees.
Furthermore, FBR has also strengthened its own legal department with the creation and appointment of higher posts at the department; resultantly, pace of prosecution is accelerated as well as FBR has one a large number of cases in last five months.
Moreover, the source said that FBR had also revamped the Alternate Dispute Resolution Committee (ADRC) to provide the taxpayers an easy and efficient mechanism for resolution of tax related disputes, outside the court of law and liquidate huge amounts of tax arrears.
“This measure has been taken to settle down the cases with higher speed because a huge amount of tax arrears was lying pending for liquidation and payment to both the stakeholders, taxpayers and FBR, due to inordinate delays in completion of litigation process” the source maintained.
Now the source hoped that the efficient use of ADRC would have a solitary effect on generation of more taxes to the government exchequer, quick disposal of longstanding pending cases in court of law, and reductions in litigation, as well as court cases.
