LAHORE: Chief Commissioner, Regional Tax Office-II, (RTO-II), Khawaja Adnan Zaheer said the RTO-II achieved the set target for the first six months of the Financial Year 2016-17. The RTO-II Lahore has collected Rs 48, 057 million from July to December 2016.
During an exclusive interview with Customs Today, Khawaja said the Regional Tax Office-II achieved the target set by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).
The chief commissioner said the RTO-II was given the target of Rs 10,357 million for the month of December 2016 against which collection of Rs 10, 554 million was made, thus surpassing the target by Rs 203 million.
“It is also noteworthy that the RTO-II Lahore has been able to achieve the growth of 29 percent and 25 percent under the head of income tax and sales tax/Federal Excise Duty (FED) respectively as compared to the collection made during December 2015”, said Khawaja Adnan Zaheer.
He further said the RTO-II Lahore has also got the assigned target of Rs 48,057 for the first six months of the financial year, thus reflecting a growth of 24 percent upto the month of December as compared to the same period of last financial year.
Khawaja Adnan Zaheer told Customs Today that he is leading his team from the front since he has joined the RTO-II Lahore on 08th of February 2016. Under his leadership, the RTO-II Lahore was able to achieve the annual target for the Financial Year 2015-16 and now the same feat has been got in the current financial year, he added.
Answering a question, he said that for the remaining six months of the financial year, the RTO-II Lahore has chalked out a plan to achieve the expected targets. In addition to the budgetary targets, he said the RTO-II has attached the highest priority to ‘Broadening of Tax Base’ i. e identification and registration of new taxpayers in liaison with the provincial revenue authority as well as district tehsil administrations of Lahore, Kasur, Shiekhupura and Okara.
Adding more, Khawaja Sahab said the RTO-II Lahore has initiated its enforcement drive against the non-filers of income tax and sales tax returns. He disclosed that all the zonal commissioners have prepared the lists of their respective non-filers to finalise the provisional assessments along with the imposition of penalties as per law.
He added that the RTO-II Lahore is facing a huge burden of new taxpayers’ registrations since the jurisdiction of all the non-corporate cases and corporate textile cases have been transferred from the Corporate RTO to RTO-II Lahore in July-August 2016.
Talking about the strategy to tackle the immense workload, Chief Commissioner RTO-II Khawaja Adnan Zaheer told Customs Today that he holds meetings with the tax bar associations of Lahore, Sheikhupura, Kasur and Okara to take them onboard for devising the taxpayers’ facilitation strategy.
“Additional logins of data entry operators were created and staff was posted to cater to the new registration applications”, he said. Adding more in order to enhance the transparency in the entire registration process, token insurance machine has been installed at the RTO-II Lahore where applicant gets an automated token numbers for processing of his registration request.
He further told Customs Today that on the demand of tax bar associations, registration cells have also been set up at Okara, Sheikhupura and Nankana Sahib to facilitate the residents of these districts in their own hometowns.
Finally, he said the FBR headquarters has delegated several functions related to the change in particulars to the respective RTOs so that taxpayers may not need visit Islamabad for resolution of such issues which were erstwhile being monitored centrally.
