July 12, 2003	Saturday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 11, 1424

ISLAMABAD, July 11: The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) is preparing a policy document to bring more than 0.6 million people under the net of income tax and sales tax within a period of three years as part of broadening the tax base.

Well-placed sources told Dawn on Friday, that Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz has directed the tax officials to prepare a comprehensive policy document for bringing the potential taxpayers, currently evading taxes, under the tax net.

According to statistics made available to Dawn, there are 3.6 million industrial and commercial phone connections—3.5 million telephone land lines and 0.5 million mobile phones.

And the CBR has issued national tax numbers to around 2 million persons, while the total return filers are around 1.4 million people. This showed that around 0.6 million people are not filing their tax returns.

On the other hand, the statistics showed that the number of registered persons with the sales tax department stood at 150,000. Of these 20, 000 persons are nil-filer and non-filers while 3,600 persons are short filer.

Sources said the statistics could be used for identifying the potential taxpayers who are either not registered with the income tax and sales tax departments or not filing their annual returns.

When contacted the CBR official spokesman and member direct taxes, Vakil Ahmed Khan confirmed to Dawn that CBR was preparing a policy document on the direction of finance minister to bring the tax evaders under the tax net.

Mr Khan said he would submit the report in this connection to finance minister for consideration within 14 days, which he said would include policy measures for broadening the tax base.

If the report, he said, was approved by the finance minister, the tax officials would initiate the move on its basis to bring the tax evaders under the tax net.

The spokesman said that finance minister has also directed the member information technology (IT) to collect data from NADRA, which he said would be used for identifying the potential taxpayers who are currently not under the tax net.

He said last year the total tax returns filed by the taxpayers were around 1 million, which he said was expected to touch the figure of 1.2 million this year.

According to the sources, a similar policy document would be prepared by the member sales tax for bringing the potential taxpayers under the sales tax net. The government has already introduced a clause in the sales tax act by empowering the tax officials to work out tax liability of non-filers.

The sources said there was a great scope for broadening the sales tax as around 20,000 persons are registered with the department but they were not paying their taxes.