KARACHI, Oct 18: The sales tax department has issued a new list of 1,160 persons against whom an amount of Rs6.237 billion in taxes is outstanding for the last several years.

According to the Collectorate of Sales Tax and Federal Excise (Enforcement), all these cases of registered persons with sales tax department had been duly

adjudicated by the competent

authority.

However, what is surprising is that the collectorate has sought assistance of trade bodies for tracing out these persons.

Firstly one would like to know about the record of the department because no person could be registered without having proper address of business premises and other necessary personal particulars.

It is also disgusting when the department asks trade bodies to provide identification documents of these defaulters which are normally demanded by them at the time of allowing memberships.

In case trade bodies fail to provide the necessary information sought by the sales tax authorities, this would mean a huge revenue loss to the national exchequer.

According to some business leaders, the names of persons appearing in the list are mostly unknown and they are not their members.

This would mean that the trade bodies would not be able to give the required information to sales tax department.

Secondly, they argue that when huge refund payments were approved, did the high ups of the sales tax department verify their records.

They also alleged that no refund could be made against a ‘fake invoice’ without the connivance of sales tax officials and staff.

Prior to exempting five major industrial exports in 2005 from sales tax, including textiles the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) on an average used to pay refunds to a tune of Rs45 to Rs50 billion out of total collection of around Rs230 billion per annum.This huge refund amount was haunting authorities as large scale fake claims submitted through ‘flying invoices’ and on registering bogus companies were causing a huge revenue loss to the national kitty.

Exporters also complained that sales tax department issued refund claims without verifying invoices and quoted some cases where software submitted by an exporter had a different claim amount.

Out of 1,160 defaulters, some names of persons who have huge outstanding arrears of tax are as bellow: A to Z Enterprises Rs46.984m, A Khaliq Brothers Rs1.376 million, A R Trading Corp Rs4.268 million, Abbas Steel Agency Rs11.338 million, Aftab Traders Rs16.618m, Bawan Shah Trading Rs147.887m, Bawan Shah Corporation Rs29.549 million, Bawan Shah Enterprise Rs71.190 million, Bawan Shah Trading Corp Rs30.216 million, and Latest Stitching Factory Rs27.885 million.