ISLAMABAD: The government has decided in principle to establish five district tax offices (DTO) per year over the next 20 years to have the Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) footprint all over the country, Dawn learnt from official sources on Wednesday.

In the first phase with a deadline set for December 2020, five DTOs will be established at Gwadar, Loralai, Tharparkar, Ghotki and Mingora.

The establishment of DTO at each district will further increase the requirement of workforce of Inland Revenue Service (IRS). These offices will be established in more than 100 districts.

At the same time, the FBR will establish new formations of IRS-Large Taxpayer Office at Multan as well as the Corporate Tax Office and High Net World Individual Commissionerate at Islamabad. The projected deadline for the establishment of these new offices is October.

The tax administration reforms were initiated last year, but the actual implementation is moving at a slow pace. Several presentations were so far made to Adviser on Finance Dr Hafeez Shaikh and Adviser on Institutional Reforms Dr Ishrat Husain.

Three key areas of reforms include processes, structure and efficiency enhancement.

On the IRS sides, it has been proposed to reposition 4,113 redundant non-professional vacancies including naib qasids, lower division clerks, upper division clerks and supervisors as sub-inspectors (SISs), assistant sub-inspectors (ASIs) and Sepoys.

The deadline for the repositioning of these posts is projected at June 2021. However, it was also proposed to hire professional staff on contract basis as inspectors, auditors and specialists. At the same time, golden handshake will be offered to redundant workforce.

App, new form

The FBR on Wednesday launched application for filing income tax returns and new tax return form to facilitate filers.

Briefing the media on the application and tax form, Inland Revenue Member Ch. Muhammad Tarique said both will ease in filing of income tax returns.

He said the FBR intends to launch an awareness campaign to educate people as well as its own staff to use the application, adding that it would also attach a guide with the application to help consumers resolve the issues.

He said the application was available in English language but would be launched its Urdu version as well.

Published in Dawn, September 10th, 2020