ISLAMABAD: Well coordinated and integrated joint efforts among key three departments and wings of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) are imperative for achieving the revenue target. Tax evaders often benefit out of weak coordination among three key tax collection related departments.
Therefore, the source at FBR told Customs Today that a legal or administrative mechanism was must to resolve their issues.
Weak coordination among the key departments Broadening of Tax Base (BTB), Inland Revenue (IR) and field formations Regional Tax Offices (RTOs) is main hurdle in the formation of a well conceived tax collection system as well as exploration of existing potential of revenue collection.
The source told that there was a need for inter departmental coordination and collaboration for meeting the future challenges in the revenue collection.
These departments seldom share intelligence and information as compared to their cooperation with other relevant organizations like State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), Foreign Office (FO) and others regarding their tracing out suspected financial transactions and potential taxpayers.
Even, the source told that heads of all three departments RTOs, BTB and I& I seldom meet to resolve inter departmental issues, and they separately to Chairman FBR and they rarely pay any heed towards correspondence of each other. In case of preoccupation of Chairman issues among these departments remain unresolved. This situation results in creation of an operational gap while tax evaders benefit out of this vacuum.
The source told that one DG BTB and three commissioners were working through RTOs as legally their reporting line was through chief commissioner but they were directly reporting to DG BTB which was the weakest possible authority legally. As per principle, there must be directors under DG BTB.
Similarly, the source said that I& I had seven directors but several potential taxpaying areas and cities like Gujaranwala and Sailkot remained unattended for being situated at far flung distance from main Large Taxpayers’ Units (LTUs). Moreover, workforce of I&I is lesser to cover such a long area. Only officers of 17-18 are working while third one is on mandatory training course. Therefore two officers are unable to trace out any big tax evader.
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