ISLAMABAD, July 5: The Central Board of Revenue will finalize measures for the merger of functions of sales tax and income tax as part of the tax administration reform project by the end of the current month.

An official told Dawn on Tuesday the CBR had already constituted two committees one each headed by the collector of sales tax and income tax commissioners to finalize the recommendations.

The committees will start working from Thursday in the CBR headquarter with a senior management on the project and was given a deadline to come up with concrete proposals by the end of July.

According to the official, it had been decided that except for enforcement of tax matters all other functions of sales tax and income tax, including audit, facilitation, registration, human resource management and return filing, would to be merged.

It was agreed with the World Bank that enforcement and audit functions of the two bodies would be carried out separately, while all other functions would be merged to avoid overlapping of the functions.

According to the official, 12 regional tax offices would be established where income tax and sales tax would be collected under the same roof with integration of the functions.