KARACHI, Sept 4: The corporate and southern regions of Income Tax have taken extensive measures for collecting tax returns by opening up tax facilitation centres. These centres are directly hooked up with computers of PRAL (Pakistan Revenue Automation Ltd), which will enable them to process the returns on daily basis.
For receiving tax returns the corporate region has opened up six tax facilitation centres in each zone, i.e. companies I to V and special zone.
On the other hand, the southern region which has a large number of taxpayers, set up facilitation centres on the ground floor of new Income Tax Building, Ata-Turk Road, because all the offices of the region are located above 5th floor of the tax building.
Regional Commissioner of Income Tax, Corporate Region, (RCIT) Karachi, Shahid Jamal told Dawn that all care had been taken to minimize manual handling and processing of tax returns, and the staff at the facilitation centres on receiving a tax return would immediately issue an acknowledgement and allot a serial number.
The staff at these centres, he said, would also guide and help taxpayers in filling tax returns. An officer of DCIT level would also be deputed for this purpose. In case the taxpayers do not have NTN (National Tax Number) the staff will also assist them in getting the tax number, he added.
For quick processing, he said, each centre had been provided with three KPOs (key punch operators) for entering the data into the PRAL’s computer system on daily basis. As a result of this, the RCIT said, it would be possible for the region to compile daily report of number of returns and the tax amount received.
The information collected by six centres will be sent to the RCIT offices for verification and onward delivery to the CBR, Islamabad, on daily basis, Shahid Jamal maintained.
He said the Income Tax Department already had taxpayers’ data of last year and that would be matched with the current data with regard to income declared and tax paid, etc.
The RCIT said that under circular 7 of 2002, Self Assessment Scheme (SAS), the public limited companies had to pay same level of tax, private limited companies 10 per cent higher tax than previous year and others, except salary class and property income, had to pay 20 per cent higher tax than a year ago.
Shahid Jamal said as most of the work would be carried out through computers, and there would be no manual handling of the process, the computer would pick up those cases which qualify for SAS. Similarly, he said the system would also select 20 per cent cases for detailed scrutiny.
The RCIT has ruled out element of discretion as entire work of selecting and picking tax cases would be carried out by the computer. Responding to a question, Shahid Jamal said the same system would be followed by the southern region.
The southern region, he said, was expected to receive over 350,000 tax returns this year (2002-2003), for which last date of filing of returns is Sept 30, 2002. Out of these, 190,000 returns belong to the salary class and 160,000 will be submitted under the SAS.
The corporate region, he said, was likely to collect 4,000 tax returns of salary class and about 1,600 returns in non-salary class — it may be under SAS.
Shahid Jamal further said that under Section 143-B tax payment from importers, exporters and supplier was also due on Sept 30, 2002. The southern region would be collecting around 23,000 returns in this regard and the corporate region over 2,000.
The RCIT said that this was the last year for the CBR regulated scheme of SAS. From next year Universal Self Assessment Scheme (USAS) will be launched which carries no conditions what so ever.