Central Board of Revenue (CBR) chairman Abdullah Yusuf has given the task of expanding tax base to commissioners of income tax (appeals) on the basis of data available through different sources, as income tax work force will be used for discovering new taxpayers after total disposal of pending appeals by June 30, 2005. All appeals are likely to be disposed of by the deadline, as the department has disposed of 23,234 pending appeals against total pendency of 35,754 as on July 1, 2004.
The decision was taken in the commissioners of income tax (appeals) conference held here on Thursday under the chairmanship of CBR chairman.
Member, Legal, Saeed Ahmed Zaidi and commissioners of income tax (appeals) gave the updated presentations on the disposal of appeals in second quarter of the current fiscal.
It was agreed that there is a need of more efforts for expanding the tax base. In future, the main task of tax officials would be searching for new taxpayers after disposal of estimated 3,500 appeals per month.
Tax officials should not physically go to taxpayers and instead use database for collection of information in this regard.
The CBR chairman said that the department has the ability to reach to the actual earnings of taxpayers. The extensive data available with departments like Wapda, mobile phone companies, data bank of Nadra and immigration, etc, can help in assessing the true income and earnings of taxpayers.
There is a need that the system must automatically bring out definite information about any taxpayer to enable the department to confront him convincingly he added.
"We must have adequate information to confront the assessee. It would help in expanding tax base," he observed.
The chairman said that revamping of tax administration has already been initiated and all 12 regional tax offices which will be put in place in 12 major cities of the country by December next, will also have at least one department appellate authority which could be increased if required.
After the entire transformation in this sector, the CBR's focus should be on expansion of tax base.
He asked commissioners to come up with sound ideas for expanding the tax base. About relations between taxpayer and the tax collector, the chairman emphasised that the element of mistrust between the two must be removed.
Unpleasant relationship between taxpayers and tax officials must end. We must trust and give confidence to taxpayers, the chairman said and added taxpayers must be educated and facilitated through the use of media and technology.
The chairman appreciated performance of legal wing as 23,234 appeals out of total pending appeals of 35,754 as on July 1, 2004 have been disposed of during the first six months of current financial year.
However, 14,134 fresh appeals have been filed during this period. The disposal achievement against the target set for first half of the year 2004-05 was 127.24 percent.
During the conference, the number of pending appeals relating to individual taxpayers/companies, their age, revenue involved in these appeals and the strategy for their early disposal was reviewed.
The conference expressed satisfaction over the general declining trend of fresh institution of appeals and achievement of the goal of minimising the litigation.
The total amount of revenue involved in pending appeal, which was Rs 37.3 billion on July 1 2004, has been reduced to Rs 19.4 billion on February 1, 2005.
The chairman called upon commissioners to make all-out efforts to clear all the pendency by June 30, 2005.
He said priority must be given to the disposal of those appeals in which heavy revenue was involved. The chairman said that although we have made much progress in the last six months but we must ensure that all pending appeals are liquidated by the end of June next.
He also directed concerned officials to work out the actual amount the department has been able to recover by pursuing litigation in various forms. He informed commissioners that the CBR has the backing of the government and the World Bank to make the tax system efficient and transparent.
It is for the first time in the history that $150 million were being invested in reforming and automating the tax machinery and help in reducing the cost of doing business.
Earlier, Member (Legal), CBR, Saeed Ahmed Zaidi briefed the conference about the overall performance of commissioners (appeals) during the second quarter of the financial year 2004-05.
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