February 15, 2003	Saturday	Zul Hijjah 13, 1423

ISLAMABAD, Feb 14: The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) has decided to establish tax registration offices in various cities as part of the re-structuring of tax administration.

Official sources told Dawn on Friday that the drive was aimed at streamlining and strengthening the existing tax registration system.

The taxpayers would require to validate their old NTNs from these centres as well as might apply for afresh NTNs under the proposed system, said the officials.

Elaborating on the proposed system, the officials said that it consists of facilitation offices in 10 cities across the country. These offices will be the contact points for the taxpayers/applicants for getting tax registration numbers.

According to the officials, at the facilitation offices, applications will be physically checked and sent to the Central Registration/Repository Office (CRO). At the CRO, entry, validation, allocation of registration number and printing would take place, said the officials.

Under the proposed system, the officials said it was also under consideration to establish counters/outlets within the premises of GPOs in these cities with the collaboration of Pakistan Post Office (PPO).

At these counters, the applicants would be able to purchase the NTN application forms/booklets and submit filled-in applications. The money would be deposited by the applicant at the post office and at the end of the day, all filled-in applications would be sent to the city collection office for preparation of NTN certificates. The officials said the NTN certificates would be delivered through the delivery services of the PPO.

According to the proposed plan, the applications were to be processed on two tracks. The processing on normal track would take maximum of 72 hours from submission of application to receiving of printed certificate by the applicant. And the express track would be used for urgent cases only and an urgent processing fee would be required to be paid by the applicant, which would be finalized the same day.

Under the proposed system, the application booklet forms will be prepared, which would be charged at Rs65 and would also cover the processing fee for the registration number.

The proposed plan would be implemented in three phases. The first phase would consist of establishing facilitation offices in seven cities besides re-organizing the three existing NTN cells. The second phase would include linkages with firms for electronic submission of applications for tax registration of number. In the third phase, web-centric technologies will be used for on- line processing of the applications, the officials said.