KARACHI, April 26: Chairman Pakistan Tanners Association S M Naseem has urged the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) to immediately release the outstanding sales tax refunds.

In a statement issued on Monday the PTA chief said that huge outstanding refund claims belonging to tanners were pending with collectors and this situation was causing acute liquidity problem for the leather industry.

S M Naseem further said in the past there were prompt payments of sales tax refunds but since November 2002, the refunds have not been made and the claims are piling up with the collectors.

The central executive committee of the PTA in its recent meeting also took strong exception to the issue and members from all over the country were having similar complaints about non-payment of sales tax refunds.

He alleged that sales tax collectors at Lahore, Multan and elsewhere in the country were unilaterally deducting huge amounts from the claims and were also deferring payments unnecessarily. Moreover, he said new formalities were being imposed from time-to-time to delay refund payments, he added.

The PTA chief felt that due to wrong doings of few companies, other exporters were also being punished. It was a firm opinion of managing committee members of PTA that sales tax staff had full knowledge of wrong claims and flying invoices but they did not take action due to their own reasons.

He said that adding up of documents was no solution to stop malpractices and the best way out was to simplify the entire GST and refund procedure by reducing the number of documents and the rate of sales tax.