KARACHI, Jan 10: The Director General of Large Taxpayers Unit (LTU) Jamil Akhtar on Friday set up an eight-member committee to look into the issues confronting the insurance sector in its day-to-day dealings with the Unit.

The committee will have equal representation from the insurance companies and LTU officials and will regularly hold a meetings in every two months.

This was announced by LTU DG Jamil Akhtar in a meeting convened by him with the representatives of the instance companies at the Unit conference hall, PIC towers.

Under the term of reference the committee members from both the sides will try to sort out all the issues put before them, except those having legal implications.

Elaborating the purpose of the committee, Mr Jamil said the committee would assist both the sides in resolving issues that caused confrontation between taxpayers and tax collectors.

He expressed the hope that by resolving issues across the table both the sides will not only save huge amounts wasted on litigation but would also save time needed for constructive activities and growth of business.

Jamil Akhtar also informed the executives of the insurance companies belonging to general insurance, life insurance and State Life Insurance that the commissioner of appeal would be available once a week at the LTU for hearing their cases.

He asked the CEs of insurance companies to submit suggestion and recommendation which will be forwarded to the CBR for the inclusion in the budget 2003-04.

Earlier, the LTU DG briefed the participants about the unit and said that presently 292 large size companies paid three categories of taxes — income, sales and excise — under one roof of LTU. He further said that about 50 per cent of these taxes is collected by the LTU.

He said the performance of the LTU in revenue collection during the first half of current fiscal had improved compared to previous records when these companies were handled by the corporate region, Karachi.

Our Reporter from Islamabad adds: The tax authorities have initiated a drive to carry out assessment and audits of all 294 companies registered with the Large Taxpayers Unit, aimed at generating more revenue to achieve the targets set for the newly established unit.

Official spokesman and member direct taxes, Vakil Ahmed Khan told Dawn on Friday that in the first step the tax authorities at LTU would dispose of assessment and audit of 50 companies by end of the current month.

Mr Khan said the audit and assessment of rest of the companies registered with LTU were expected to be disposed of by end of May 2003.

According to the spokesman, the CBR has directed the regional commissioner income tax, corporate region, Karachi, and the director general of LTU to sort out the issue of income tax target set for the LTU.

He said the enforcement wing of LTU had also started proper monitoring of deduction of withholding tax that would help in generating more revenue.

On the other hand, there are 305 cases pending with the commissioner appellate zone-I in respect of companies transferred to LTU.

Official statistics provided to Dawn, showed the LTU collected Rs6.8 billion under the head of direct taxes during the July-December period of the current financial year against the target of Rs9 billion set for the same period, showing a decline of 24.44 per cent. The CBR set a target of Rs28 billion for LTU for current financial year.

However, the officials claimed that in comparison to the collection from the same units during the same period last year it stood at Rs6.299bn against this year collection of Rs6.33bn, showing an increase of 0.5 per cent.

According to the officials, an increase of 55.69 per cent was registered in collection of sales tax by LTU during the first half year over the same period of last year and 11.23 per cent increase was registered in the collection of central excise duty over the same period of last year.

The LTU attended 125 hearings before appellate tribunal, FTO and the Supreme Court during the first half year under sales tax and hearing in 370 cases of income tax attended by officers of legal division during the same period.'