KARACHI: The State Bank on Thursday issued detailed guidelines for the digitisation of collection of taxes and duties.

The central bank said there were complaints and concerns by the tax payers over low awareness of banks’ field staff regarding the Alternate Delivery Channels (ADC) and Over-the Counter (OTC) mechanism.

Issuing the guidelines, the SBP directed banks to ensure that their branches have fully functional OTC system integrated with 1Link to collect government taxes and duties. The branch staff should have full understanding of the system and should facilitate tax payers in payment of taxes, the SBP added.

“While we appreciate the effective role and contribution of banks in making this initiative a huge success, there are still complaints and concerns by the tax payers about low awareness of banks’ field staff about the ADC particularly the OTC mechanism,” the central bank said. It advised banks to take measures for digitisation of collecting taxes and duties with immediate priority.

Custom duty is dependent on the exchange rate. Thus, there may be cases where the taxpayer generates Payment Slip ID (PSID) on one day and approaches the bank for payment on another day, the amount of duty reflected on the PSID could be different from the one appearing on bank’s terminal, the central bank said.

“In such cases if the cheque presented is of lesser amount, the banks shall accept the additional amount in cash or cheque as per the convenience of the taxpayer. In case the cheque amount is greater than the custom duty appearing on the bank’s terminal, the excess amount will be credited in the taxpayer’s account with the bank,” the SBP added.

“There have been complaints that the banks’ branches do not accept cheque drawn on another branch of their bank for payment of taxes and ask the tax payer to visit the branch on which the cheque is drawn. As all bank branches are online, the tax payer can pay taxes in any branch of his or her bank,” said the SBP.

The banks will ensure that all their branches are accepting the taxes and duties through ADC mechanism and that their customers can pay taxes in any branch of his/her bank. The banks will send an SMS or email messages to their clients informing them that they can pay their taxes and custom duty via internet, mobile banking, ATMs or in any branch of their bank by submitting a cheque.

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2021