ISLAMABAD: Of the 3,000 complaints received by the Office of the Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) between January and June this year, 2,650 complaints have been addressed, FTO Dr Asif Mahmood Jah said on Friday.

He was speaking to the business community at the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) and stated that the time it takes to resolve complaints has been reduced from 68 to 40 days, with 75 suo motu cases being handled during the six-month period.

He said that on the orders of the FTO, customs authorities collected over Rs5 billion by auctioning pending vehicles and goods, while, on the intervention of the FTO, FBR cleared refunds of about Rs8bn from taxpayers.

He said that FTO has set up five new regional offices to expand its network for the facilitation of taxpayers. He assured that FTO would continue to act as an advocate for taxpayers to address their grievances and stressed that the business community should take advantage of its services for redressal of their tax complaints.

He also nominated Islamabad Women’s Chamber of Commerce & Industry’s Naima Ansari as Honorary Business Coordinator of FTO and presented a nomination letter to her on the occasion.

The FTO team included its Adviser (Customs) Dr Arslan Subuctageen, Adviser (Media & Awareness) Sarwat Tahira Habib and Adviser (Legal) Almas Ali Jovindah.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2022