03 November 2004	Wednesday	19 Ramazan 1425

ISLAMABAD, Nov 2: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recommended to the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) to establish sales tax facilitation centres across the country.

An official source told Dawn on Tuesday that the IMF recommendation had come following the observation that the CBR tax offices had hardly any facility for a convenient, friendly and central point of access to the taxpayers.

With these lack of facilities, the IMF recommended to the tax officials to work out procedures for the proposed facilitation centres.

The official said as part of the restructuring of the tax administration to facilitate the taxpayers, particularly regarding universal self-assessment scheme, the CBR had established some facilitation centres at various locations in the country for direct taxes.

These centres in the first step would provide services of receipt of applications for registration/issuance of NTN and changes in related information, on-the-spot verification as to the completeness of the application and required documentation, attestation of NICs, getting the application processed, delivery of registration or change certificate to the taxpayers obtained from Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited and communicating the deficiency in issuing the registration or change certificates.