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ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue on Monday set up a centralised audit task force to evolve audit policy for the tax machinery and monitoring the whole process of audit using third party data to unearth the potential tax evaders, a senior tax official told Dawn on Monday.
Member Inland Revenue Service Khawar Khurshid Butt will head the task force. Chief Commissioner IRS Shahid Anwar has been appointed as director general of the task force, Chief IRS Rehmatullah Wazir and Additional Commissioner Mehmood Aslam as members.
Aside from the tax officers, the Competitiveness Support Fund (CSF), a joint initiative of the Ministry of Finance, Pakistan, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) appointed two advisors to assist the task force. They are former chairman FBR Abdullah Yousuf and ex-member Tax Facilitation Habib Fakhrudin.
Talking to Dawn Member IRS Khawar Khurshid Butt said that the task force was established on account of two reasons. The prime reason, he said was the failure of the past experience of random selection for audits. This did not help in value addition to the system, he added.
Mr Butt said that complains of harassment of taxpayers was also received during the audit. At the same time the past audit also did not improve the compliance level, he added. “We want to make the audit on scientific lines. This will help to improve the tax-to-GDP ratio”, the member IRS claimed.
The member said that the task force had been tasked to evolve an efficient audit policy and monitor its implementation. They will also establish third party data warehouse and monitor the audit in the filed from the FBR headquarters, he added.
FBR Chairman Salman Saddique announced in June after budget to launch a centralised audit system to be effective from July 1. He claimed that the efforts would be made to bridge the tax to GDP ratio by bringing the defaulters under the net.
As a result of this, the official said that the FBR did not send any notice to taxpayers this year who understated their incomes in their tax returns for routine audits.
The government had suspended tax audits during the year 2002-08 after the introduction of Universal Self-Assessment Scheme (USAS) based on the concept of voluntary assessment. This policy has actually encouraged concealment of income by the taxpayers during the past few years as audit was put on cold burner. Commenting on the new audit approach, the official said it would be a meaningful and target-oriented audit without causing harassment to taxpayers.
