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pakISTan’S FIrST InDepTh newSpaper on CuSTomS
Vol 1 Issue no. 32
karachi, Tue Sept 24 - mon Sept 30, 2013
weekly
regd. no, mC-1381
Price Rs. 50.00
Body to probe aTT scam
TaxYear2012-13
SBp’s new monitory policy
FBrChairmanTariqBajwa ISLAMABAD
FaIZa ISrar
www.customstoday.com
Diverging from the govt’s thrust to stimulate growth, the State Bank of Pakistan has raised the policy rate by 50 basis points to 9.5 percent | See page 4 |
allegations are baseless
Customs agents are facing multiple problems including ATT scam, division of PaCCs Collectorate and failure ofWeBOC system, says APCAA Chairman | See page 5 |
Cartoons Special
| See page 11 |
F
ive per cent taxpayers selected from different categories would be issued notices for their detailed audits but the random selection of cases did not mean that all these persons or companies had evaded taxes, FBR Chairman Tariq Bajwa told Customs Today, while explaining the audit process. Talking to this scribe, he said those who will receive notices for the audit purpose should not panic as FBR wants to countercheck whether they honestly declared their income and sales details in the returns or not. “The difference between this exercise and the past ones is that this time fresh balloting has been conducted without the element of subjectivity,” said Bajwa. In the past, FBR used pre-determined parameters, which the taxpayers challenged in the courts, resulting in the failure of all such exercises. FBR high-ups, he said, were aware that the taxpayers might again take FBR to the court but this time the mechanism devised is such that the authorities could defend themselves in any court of law. He said FBR was implementing the Self-Assessment Scheme because it believed that the taxpayers would honestly declare their income and liabilities but a robust audit was essential to remind the taxpayers that they could be caught for giving misleading and incorrect information to tax authorities. He said in addition to the cases
selected through random balloting, FBR would also conduct desk audit in cases where the commissioners prima facie believed that the return Nilers under-declared their income and sales. Bajwa said there was signiNicant difference between tax collection and actual tax potential, and to minimise this gap FBR has planned three interventions. In addition to audit functions, FBR was also sending notices to potential taxpayers and to those who are taxpayers but did not declare their actual income. These interventions, he said, are expected to fetch minimum 13% additional revenues over and above the tax paid by the taxpayers. Explaining the new audit strategy, FBR Chairman Tariq Bajwa said that Large Taxpayer Units (LTUs) and Regional Tax OfNices (RTOs) would issue system generated notices to the units selected for audit. Each electronic notice would contain speciNic barcode for identiNication purposes. The electronic notices with the bar-codes would ensure transparency in the process of audit. If any registered person receives notice without bar-code, the same should be ignored. Such manual notices which are not system generated are not genuine and taxpayers should not respond to such notices. Tariq Bajwa said that if people demand more services from the government then it is their duty to be more responsible in filing their tax returns as per their actual incomes. If more revenue is raised, the government could provide basic amenities and services to the people. If fewer taxes are collected, government services would definitely be slashed too, he maintained. Due to less revenue and more expenditure, the
— Exlusive Customs Today photo
No container can be taken out from any port without clearance by the Customs authorities, says Ports and Shipping Minister Kamran Michael | See page 3 |
Robustauditessential tocountercheck taxdetails
See page 02