LAHORE, April 13: The Punjab government has planned restructuring the Excise and Taxation Department along functional lines by separating its functions of tax assessment, collection, audit and recovery.

Excise and Taxation officials told Dawn on Friday that the department had forwarded the plan to the provincial Finance Department for consideration and approval.

The reorganisation of the department is being undertaken in the light of recommendations made in a study by the Punjab Resource Management Programme (PRMP) that seeks reforming the entire provincial tax administration along modern lines. They said the study also proposed restructuring the Punjab Board of Revenue (BoR) and agriculture, stamp duty and urban immovable property taxes.

The PRMP study calls for the establishment of a single provincial revenue collecting agency along the lines of the Central Board of Revenue by 2009 or 2010, as part of the long-term tax reform strategy, officials said.

The study proposed that until merger of revenue collecting functions of the BoR and the excise and taxation department took place, organisational structure, human resource capabilities and procedures for inductions, database and collection processes should gradually be improved in both tax collecting agencies.

“The reforms should include streamlining data and tax collection procedures in these organisations so that at a secondary stage and consolidation of the two entities could be undertaken without any hindrance,” the officials stated.

Excise and Taxation officials said the department had already reorganised its secretariat office and the proposed plan called for reforming the “field office”. They said the reorganisation of the field office would take place in two phases. They said restructuring was expected to be completed by 2009 if “we could not complete it in 2008”.

The Punjab government initiated tax administration reforms with the financial assistance of $100 million from the Asian Development Bank under the PRMP. Since the tax restructuring proposals could not be implemented within the stipulated timeframe, the Asian Development Bank proposed to include it as tranche trigger for the first tranche of the loan.

The officials claimed the separation of functions of the Excise and Taxation department would help increase revenue, curb corruption and facilitate taxpayers.