ISLAMABAD, Feb 4: The tax authorities have claimed to have detected 14850 fake documents through the newly established automated refund system during the last four months preventing undue refunds.

A senior official in the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) told Dawn on Tuesday that following the establishment of STARR — an automated refund system on October 1, 2002 — about 14,850 fake documents were detected involving an amount of Rs429.8 million.

The official said it was only due to the automated system that the tax authorities have stopped the undue payment of sales tax refunds during the last four months.

The automated refund system is aimed at creating an efficient and effective sales tax refund system through automation, which speeds up genuine refund claims while preventing undue refund payments.

Elaborating further, the official said that fake documents detected under sales tax invoices through this system included documents of 447 black listed suppliers filed for claim of refunds of Rs14.9 million; 348 documents of closed suppliers for Rs19.5 million; 1244 documents of de-registered suppliers for Rs44.9 million; 84 documents of duplicate invoices involving amount of Rs7.3 million; 1934 documents of non-existent supplier for Rs74.4 million; 186 documents of nil filer (supplier) for Rs9.2 million and 10350 documents of non-filer (supplier) for an amount of Rs224.9 million respectively.

During the same period, through the system, the official said that around 13 duplicate shipping bills were detected involving an amount of Rs29 million and 155 sales tax mismatched documents involving an amount of Rs3.9 million.

According to the official, the total number of refund cases received through this system were 1600 by end-January. Out of which 1300 were verified from STARR, in which cheques were issued against 640 cases. The unpaid cases at various processing stages were 640.

Pointing out problems in the existing system, the officials said that refunds to exporters involved different practices in different collectorates: resistance from claimants, transfer of trained staff, new refund rules, data receipt and integrity. The other problems included incompatible soft copies and connectivity issues.

According to the official to overcome all these and other problems, the tax authorities are planning to make software more flexible, and extensive briefing and counselling will be provided at each collectorate to claimants, new people will be trained; CBR would issue clarification regarding the new refund rules, and there would be continuous contact and pursuit and intelligent checks are being devised.