PESHAWAR, Nov 7: Officials of the income tax group have praised a decision of the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) transferring 26 deputy commissioners to the sales tax and central excise directorate.

The income tax group officials held a meeting here on Saturday to discuss the situation after the transfer and posting order and the reaction of customs and excise group officials over the CBR move, official sources told Dawn on Saturday.

Explaining their viewpoint on the controversy, these officials said the functions of the sales tax, at present manned by the customs and excise group officers and those of the income tax, were one and the same.

Both the functions determine net income of the taxpayer for the levy of duty, they said.

Despite these similarities in functions and processes, both the wings of the CBR had been working independent of each other with the result the taxpayer had to face multiple processes, which were not only time-consuming but also costly and cumbersome, they said.

They alleged that unscrupulous taxpayers, taking advantage of the situation, used to file returns with different figures to both the departments in order to evade taxation.

Defending the CBR decision, the officers said that independent running of the two departments for a single purpose was also an extra burden on the public exchequer.

They claimed that the deputy commissioners of income tax were audit trained right from the start and fully equipped to scrutinize all kinds of accounts maintained by businessmen.

The officers of the customs and excise group, on the other hand, mostly rely on auditors as they do not have the requisite expertise, they added.

The reforms agenda of the government demands that the intervention of inspectors/auditors is minimized. Therefore, the transfer of audit-trained deputy commissioners of the income tax group to the sales tax directorate was in keeping with the spirit of the reforms, they said.

The officers described the apprehensions of the customs and excise group officers that their seniority would be affected as baseless, saying the transferred officers would hold their lien with the parent office in the income tax group.