December 17, 2002	Tuesday	Shawwal 12, 1423

MULTAN, Dec 16: The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) is likely to notify ‘alternative dispute resolution committees (ADRC)’ within a few days to introduce ‘Panchayat’ system in tax collection.

This was announced by Sales Tax Member Ramzan Bhatti, while addressing two separate gatherings at the offices of Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PGGA) and Multan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MMCI) here on Monday.

He said that any dispute between the CBR and the tax payers regarding the payments of levies could be raised at the ADRC even if it had been decided by the tribunals. However, he said the matters decided by either high court or Supreme Court could not be referred to the committees.

Mr. Bhatti said cases under trial in the courts could only be sent to ADRCs when they were withdrawn from the courts. He said the proposed ‘Panchayats’ would be headed by people from the private sector.

He said the CBR believed in transparency and openness. He informed the local business community that the laws regarding registration and re-registration were being reviewed and the proposed amendments were available on the official web site of the CBR for suggestion and criticism.

He said there were around 150,000 firms/business concerns registered with the sales tax department throughout the country. Of them, 50,000 did not bother to file their returns, other 50,000 did not contribute any penny in the ST Head while only one-third of the registered firms paid the tax.

Hitting hard the local business community, Mr. Bhatti Said Multan and Faisalabad had become the centres of filing fake invoices. “This is not fair as rooting out corruption is a collective responsibility of both tax payers and collectors.”

He assured the businessmen that the audit officials would be held responsible if the cases of tax evasion they referred to the court could not qualify the judicial scrutiny. He said legal cells had been established at all the collectorates of sales tax in the country.

He said that 60 per cent collections under the ST head in Multan collectorate was contributed by only ginning sector while rest of the business had the share of only 40 per cent. He said claims of Rs250m about sales tax refund were filed only in the Multan Collectorate during the last two months.

Regarding complaints about SRO 575, he said this modified form of SRO 415 was a brainchild of the Export Promotion Bureau and the sales tax department was working on rectifying its flaws, if any.

He said the claims filed before the introduction of SRO 575 on Aug 31 last would fall under the provision of SRO 415.

He urged the business community to visit the CBR web site for information and the redressal of their procedural problems. However, both the ginners and he chamber people expressed their dissatisfaction over the efficiency and performance of the CBR web site and its programmes.

At this, Mr. Bhatti assured them that he would talk to designers of the site to make it more user-friendly.

Mr Bhatti assured them that if the cotton dust was not a supplyable commodity there would be no sales tax on it. He directed the collector, sales tax, to look into the matter and in the meantime suspended collection of ST on what ginners were saying dust.