ISLAMABAD, March 5: The government has decided to conduct a tax base enhancement exercise through secondary data collected from various sources to bring the potential taxpayers in the tax net.

Official sources in the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) told Dawn on Saturday that the tax officials would detect the nil tax returns filers with the income tax department, from the secondary data, collected from Wapda, telecommunication, private mobile phone service providers, auto-manufacturers, housing authorities, banks, foreign travel agencies, Hujj and Ummra operators and leading clubs of the country.

The direct data was already available with the income tax department in the master index collected from taxpayers through tax returns during the last years.

The government in the first phase has started the exercise in the two major cities of Karachi and Lahore. For this purpose, the government has appointed the commissioners of income tax Zone-A, Zone-B, Medium Taxpayers Unit (MTU), Karachi and Zone-E. The commissioner of Zone-C would be responsible for the areas mentioned for broadening of tax base and exercise jurisdiction for the purpose of booking of new taxpayers for Karachi region, added the officials.

For Lahore region, the commissioner of income tax for Zone-B has been given the same responsibility for booking new taxpayers in his jurisdiction.

The commissioners would analyze the data mostly included the computerized National Identity Cards (CNICs) numbers regarding bills of electricity, gas, telephone, mobile phones, automobile purchasers, foreign travellers, club membership holders, housing authorities, credit cards holders, banks accounts. This data, the officials said would be cross matched with the data maintained at the master index of National Tax Numbers (NTNs) at CBR currently updated by the CNICs.

The officials said that the board had already proposed to the respective organization to make it compulsory for consumers to give their computerised National identity Cards (CNICs) numbers for getting new telephone or electricity connections or any other services.

They have also been asked to update their old records having no or old NICs to be replaced with the new NICs so that it would become easier for the tax detecting team to identify the potential taxpayers.

Finally, the officials said the data would be compared with the record maintained by the National Database Registration Authority. Through this exercise, the officials said the nil-filers identified would be issued notices asking them to file returns with the income tax department.

It was estimated that more than 0.3 million taxpayers would be added to the list of existing income taxpayers, which would take the number of taxpayers to 1.5 million as the current return filers stood at around 1.2 million.