ISLAMABAD, May 17: The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) has constituted special teams for carrying out desk audits of the income tax returns filed this year to detect taxpayers who have understated their income, a senior tax official told Dawn. The CBR has already started collection of information from various sources including PTCL, banks, Wapda and automobile manufacturers for cross matching of the information of the data captured from income tax returns for the tax year 2004 to detect the evasion of taxes.
Chairman CBR M. Abdullah Yousuf in an interview with Dawn on Tuesday said that desk audit was already in hand. There would be surprised audits of the taxpayers by these teams, he added. Answering a question, the chairman said there was no need to tell the people about the parameters of the audit. “Even if required physical audit of the taxpayers’ records would also take place”, he asserted.
The chairman said lists of the taxpayers particularly the corporate taxpayers, who are believed to have understated their income, have been finalized for the desk audits. The chairman said that he was not satisfied with the income declared by the taxpayers in their returns filed this year. Only 55,111 taxpayers out of a total 518,384 non-salary taxpayers were showing an annual income of more than Rs250,000, which showed that most of the taxpayers have understated their income in the range of around Rs25,000 per month.
In the corporate sector, 3,174 taxpayers out of the total 9,962 have filed returns showing no income, 3,586 have shown loss in their businesses and only 3,202 corporate taxpayers have declared income in their returns this year.
About broadening of the tax base, the CBR chairman said that the target of 15 per cent growth in the number of income taxpayers would be achieved. “It is the duty of every potential person to file tax returns with the income tax department,” he added.
“We have already asked the SECP to update their records to mention the actual functional corporate taxpayers. These 45,000 corporate companies might include those who have even wound up their businesses. There is a need of updating this data as well”, the chairman said.
Answering another question, the chairman said that efforts would be made from the next fiscal year to bring all manufacturers under the sales tax net. “This registration would help us to identify the retailers and wholesalers from the record of manufacturers”, the chairman said. The chairman admitted that sales tax auditors were harassing the taxpayers. He added that a transparent audit would be started soon. He said that various options were under consideration for bringing real estate under the tax net.
