The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) clarified on Tuesday that the budget proposals, including Finance Bill 2005-06, SROs, rules and procedures were timely available on CBR official website. However, it was not the responsibility of CBR to place the budget speech on the website, as it did not relate to tax officials.
The CBR, for the first time, had not only given complete set of budget documents to the journalist community on budget evening, but had also given a CD of budget documents.
Tax officials also clarified tax proposals to reporters after the announcement of budget speech to ensure accurate reporting of taxation measures by economic reporters. Obviously, the people interested in the budget speech should either have contacted the Ministry of Finance or PID, they added.
CBR officials told Business Recorder on Tuesday that over 5,000 people had downloaded the budget from CBR website on Monday. The toll-free telephone numbers of helpline has many lines, which responded to the people to clarify various issues. The obtaining of toll-free number before budget was not an easy task due to the strike of PTCL employees during the past week.
CBR officials said that they had tried their level best to facilitate the taxpayers. A number of persons contacted CBR through these telephone numbers and obtained necessary information. A full-fledged media campaign was only launched to facilitate the business community so that they could timely obtain budget documents and information on taxation measures.
A team of specialised officials was deputed in the Board offices with the assignment to guide the taxpayers. However, the confusion was only created due to absence of budget speech, which had to be provided by other government departments and not by CBR.
Officials said that some people thought that CBR documents were available on the website of Ministry of Finance and did not access the CBR website.
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