ISLAMABAD: Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) Thursday organised an awareness workshop regarding its project titled “Public Awareness and Advocacy About Dispute Resolution Mechanism of Federal Tax Ombudsman” for medium and small scale enterprises at a local hotel in Rawalpindi.
M Siddique, Advisor (Implementation & Monitoring), shed light on the historical perspective of the ombudsman office. He gave detailed presentation about the working of the FTO office. He said at present, there are 150 ombudsman offices in the world.
In Pakistan, the ombudsman office was established in 1983 and in year 2000, an independent office of Federal Tax Ombudsman was established. He elaborated in detail the complaint filing procedure and other available facilities provided by the FTO office to aggrieved taxpayers.
He said the mandate of FTO office is to ensure prompt and inexpensive redress of taxpayers’ genuine grievances against maladministration by the tax employees of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR)/Revenue Division, Government of Pakistan. He said an average 1500 complaints annually are currently being handled by the FTO offices across Pakistan.
Siddique also highlighted the success stories of the FTO office since its establishment in year 2000. He said the tax-payers can file their complaints by courier, by hand, online or through e-mail. He said the services of FTO offices are free of cost, citizens friendly and the complaints are decided in 60 days. He said Form-A is available on the website (www.fto.gov.pk) of the FTO on which tax-payers can lodge their complaints. The form can also be obtained from the FTO offices, besides its Islamabad secretariat, located in Lahore, Karachi, Quetta, Peshawar, Sukkur, Abbottabad, Multan and Faisalabad.
The traders gave useful feedback to the FTO team. Sheikh M. Siddique, President Central Anjuman-e-Taajran Registered Rawalpindi, Malik Arshad Awan, Present Central Anjuman-e- Taajran Rawalpindi, Chaudhry Iqbal Ahmed, President Central Anjuman-e- Taajran, Moti Bazaar Rawalpindi, Sharjeel Meer and others also addressed the event. In the end, Farhan Khan, Deputy Director Administration, FTO Secretariat, gave a vote of thanks to the traders. The session was moderated by Ali Nasir, Media Manager, FTO Secretariat, Islamabad.
