ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) seized 65.811 million cigarette sticks worth Rs156.48 million in the first four months of current fiscal year as part of a drive against tax evasion.

The seizure of cigarettes resulted in detection of evasion of taxes and duties of Rs125.662m during the period under review.

The Inland Revenue Enforcement Network (IREN), a subordinate department of Inland Revenue, was established in September 2019 to conduct raids and seizures on the counterfeit and non-duty paid cigarettes.

In October, IREN had seized 16.326m illegal cigarettes worth Rs46.978m. As such evasion of taxes and duties worth of Rs33.366m was detected.

An official announcement said that as a part of ongoing country-wide crackdown against illicit cigarette trade, all IREN hubs intensified their operation against businesses dealing in non-duty paid and counterfeit cigarettes to save national exchequer from revenue loss.

FBR Chairman Ashfaq Ahmed has announced that from Jan 1, 2022, the Track & Trace System (TTS) would be rolled out to cover tobacco manufacturing across the country, and that AJK government had also approached the board to extend the scope of TTS to cigarette manufacturing units located inside AJK territory.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Customs has developed an automated facility in WeBOC System to enable the small and medium export enterprises to acquire imported input goods from a Common Export House (CEH) for subsequent exports under the Export Facilitation Scheme 2021.

The CEH is a warehouse authorised by the collector of customs for importing supply of input goods without payment of customs duty, sales tax, federal excise duty and withholding tax, to the small and medium export enterprises, direct or indirect exporters or commercial exporters.

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2021