The World Bank (WB) has asked the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) to expedite work on the development of ''Data Warehousing'' with the help of State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) for creation of taxpayers'' national database.
Sources told Business Recorder on Sunday that the WB has termed the ''Data Warehousing'' project a top priority area for the CBR. The Board has constituted a team, under the supervision of Member, Fiscal Research and Statistics (FRS), to speed up work on the project.
The CBR must keep liaison with SBP to benefit from the latter''s experience in developing a data warehouse, sources said.
The WB will finalise the project during the coming visits of the review mission in the last week of November.
Sources said that the Board is already working on a computerised system for collection of taxpayers'' data from various external sources. The idea behind the whole exercise is to conduct a thorough analysis of the tax profiles prior to launching of the system.
So far, the ''Pilot project'', to demonstrate analysis of top 150 taxpayers'' data, has not yet been started. The analysis of the taxpayers'' profiles would be done after compilation of all necessary database. Sources said that CBR has admitted, at various forums, that the experience of the Board in collecting taxes by use of force has not worked, as expected, during the last many years. There is a need of comprehensive data bank to have firsthand information about the taxpayers. For example, CBR is obtaining information about foreign travels from the FIA/immigration staff. Similarly, the information about utility bills is being verified by the utility agencies. The reliability of information plays a key role in demanding taxes from the taxpayers. This could only be done electronically without direct interaction with the taxpayers.
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