ISLAMABAD, April 2: The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) has formally launched Sales Tax Risk Evaluation and Management System (STREAMS) for speedy payment of refund through a risk assessment of refund claims. The STREAMS will be effective from March 31, 2005, said a sales tax notification SRO283 issued here on Saturday. The pilot project of STREAMS has been initially launched at Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad for 192 large scale refund claimants successfully. Roll out for select claimants of Sialkot and Multan was planned for April and May 2005, respectively.

Officials in the CBR said that the new system would provide an efficient, effective and transparent sales tax refund system and simultaneously ensure speedy payment to genuine refund claimants, while preventing undue refund payments. STREAMS would maintain taxpayer profiles based on multi-tax data of regular claimants and suppliers. The data provided by the claimants will be analyzed by the computer resulting in determination of the risk assessment of the claim whereupon the claim would go either into a green channel (for immediate payment) or into yellow channel (for further scrutiny) or into a red channel (for initiation of detailed audit).

The officials said that the project was more user-friendly as the processing tiers have been reduced and envisages greater transparency as refund claimant queue breaking was now not possible.

The CBR had earlier established Sales Tax Automated Refund Repository (STARR) in February 2003, which provided a basis for further improvements in automation.

Accordingly, re-engineered refund procedures based on principles of risk-management i.e. cases posing low-risk will be paid immediately through a relatively simplified process, while cases posing high risk will be audited, known as STREAMS.

The officials said the new system was expected to be seamless, more efficient and will handle refund cases on a broader scope of risk-analysis as against present capacity limitation of document/ invoice verification.