KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) Regional Tax Office-I (RTO-I) Karachi has detected over Rs 3 billion sales tax evasion made by the steel sector in the country.
The RTO team has recently submitted a detailed report in this regard to the Chief Commissioner RTO-I, Hafiz Muhammad Ali Indhar.
According to the details, this menace was going on through a unique manner of evasion of sales tax, leading to huge loss of revenue.
While, following the chain of fake/flying invoices, it was detected by the RTO staff that a large number of invoices are being issued by registered persons of the steel sector, involving sales tax in excess of the amount paid on their electricity consumption.
Dozens of cases has been detected by the RTO and to elaborate the situation in one such case Bashir Sons Steel Casting (STRN 0307720600491) in their return profile for 2011-12, it reveals that during the year, they paid Rs 24.9 million sales tax through their electricity bills, but issued invoices involving sales tax Rs 54.5 million. Even if the electricity consumption was converted to MT (@Rs 800units/MT), the invoices issued are in excess of the deemed production.
This is one such example while over 80 such cases have so far been detected by the RTO team.
The Chief Commissioner RTO-I Hafiz Muhammad Ali Indhar commended the efforts of his team members and has forwarded the matter to Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) for further action.
