KARACHI, July 20: Central Board of Revenue chairman Mohammad Abdullah Yousuf has advised the business community to take advantage of the mechanism of alternate dispute resolution that is applicable to income tax, customs, central excise, etc. , and should get their problems resolved through the Alternate Dispute Resolution Committee.

He assured the business community that the CBR would review all the appeals that had been filed against the cases of business community and except those pertaining to genuine cases, the rest would be withdrawn.

Addressing members of the Korangi Association of Trade and Industry (KATI) on Tuesday, the CBR chief appealed to the business community to help the CBR in getting the unregistered persons registered and for the purpose officers of the tax department would like to accompany the business leaders to visit large business centres to motivate them to get themselves registered and pay taxes honestly, says a KATI press release.

Mr Yousuf said that sales tax refund issue would be tackled in a right manner and the CBR was trying to reduce the level of refunds as far as possible. He regretted that there were only 1.25 million taxpayers, out of which 425,000 belong to the salaried class. "The number of taxpayers should be doubled so that the burden of existing taxpayers is proportionately decreased."

Mr Yousuf said that over 42,000 SMEs had been delisted from sales tax as a result of enhancing the ceiling of annual turnover up to Rs5 million. He also said that payment of presumptive tax at the rate of 0.75 per cent of the turnover would also be applicable to the manufacturers.

The CBR chief admitted that refund of income tax to the assessees remained outstanding for a long period and added that it was his endeavour to clean up the deadlock as quickly as possible.

He said that as far as section 73 was concerned, it had been amended in total concurrence of the FPCCI. "However, if there are any irritants that could be looked into." He exhorted the business community to come forward and fulfil their commitment of meeting the revenue target of Rs580 billion fixed for the current fiscal year.

He also advised the exporters to avail the DTRE scheme and in case there were any procedural difficulties, they could be removed in consultation with the business community.

Referring to the points raised by the KATI chairman regarding a six per cent withholding tax at import stage, Mr Yousuf agreed that it was unreasonable and would be changed. Mr Yousuf, however, said that the country needed to achieve increasing consistent growth every year that could only be possible with the help and cooperation of the business community.

In response to a question, the CBR chief said that in terms of percentage, the annual cost of tax collection was only 0.6 per cent of the tax collected and in terms of value, it is Rs3 billion.

He said that as far as audit parameters were concerned, they were determined by the CBR and not by the commissioners. He said the introduction of Universal Self Assessment Scheme last year was a great step which has yielded good results and added that barring four to five per cent, all the returns filed are considered as assessment orders.

KATI's patron-in-chief S.M. Muneer said the refunds of income tax had been pending since long and something had to be done to streamline the system to pay income tax refund claims. He advised the CBR chairman not to file appeal against all FTO orders and effort should be made to settle the cases outside the court.

Earlier, KATI chairman Mian Zahid Hussain demanded that expert industrialists from the private sector should be inducted in Tax Advisory Committee so that tax system could be reformed in a better way.

He says that every industrialist wants to pay taxes but the tax collector should treat them in a nice manner and create better atmosphere for the taxpayers to pay their taxes.