ISLAMABAD, Nov 4: The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) has decided to suspend the Sales Tax internal field audit system aiming to stop harassment of taxpayers by internal auditors as part of restructuring of tax administration.

The decision was taken unanimously at the conference of Collectors of Sales Tax and Central Excise headed by CBR Chairman M Abdullah Yousuf here on Thursday.

An official announcement said that it was also decided to create a cell in each collectorate headed by a responsible officer to undertake the task of broadening of tax base.

These cells would be required to have regular interaction with large industries and firms, located under their areas of jurisdiction, particularly at manufacturers' level to achieve the desired results.

It was also decided to extend the date of filing of returns up to Dec 31, 2004 for deregistration of those retailers whose turnover was less than Rs5 million.

Performance of collectorates regarding effective monitoring and recovery from non-filers through presumptive assessment under Section II of the Sales Tax Act 1990 also came under discussion during the conference.

The CBR chairman emphasized the need for making the collectorates professional organizations and to achieve their true revenue potential. The targets of each collectorate should therefore, be worked out by analysing the trends in industrial production and growth.

He called for improvements in refund payments and directed that we should clear the backlog as early as possible.

The conference took other necessary decisions which included out of tax period adjustment, input tax adjustment on utility bills, additional tax on advances, waiver of additional tax and penalty, dispute on value addition, input tax adjustment on services and condonation of delay under Section 66.

Earlier, Member Sales Tax and Central Excise Shahid Ahmed gave an overview of the performance of the collectorates in the first three months of the current financial year.