TRACKER successfully used in expanding tax net: FBR Member IR tells Senate body

Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Member Inland Revenue (IR) Shahid Hussain Asad has told Senate Standing Committee on Finance that indigenously developed web-based 'TRACKER' has successfully been used in expanding the tax net with the help of Broadening the Tax-Base (BTB) Units across the country.
Giving updates on broadening the tax-base to the Senate Standing Committee on Finance chaired by Senator Ahmed Ali, FBR Member IR said that the FBR was strongly pursing the national documentation drive with the help of National and Database Registration Authority (NADRA) statistics and its own 'TRACKER' system based on CNICs.
Primarily, it was the task of the FBR to expand the documented regime with the help of its own database, he added. The 'TRACKER' was a FBR's home-grown system containing third party data from several sources, which included property data, motor vehicles registration authorities, housing authorities, capital value tax data, school fees, clubs, foreign travels and other information collected from identified sources, he said.
The web-based application would collect information about the persons and wherever he makes transaction using CNICs. With the help of 'TRACKER', the FBR was successfully operating the system to generate notices to the person concerned to justify their income and come into the tax net. In the presence of authentic data, the person concerned had to obtain the NTN, file the due return and deposit the tax to the national kitty, he further said.
When asked whether FBR had brought all 0.7 million potential persons into the tax net, FBR Member IR said that the Board was in process of making these persons part of the documented regime. So far, Directorate General Intelligence and Investigation (DGI&I) Inland Revenue (IR), FBR had issued 457,000 notices to potential persons including 'elite class' under the exercise of broadening the tax-base, he informed the committee.
The FBR was able to recover an amount of Rs 700 million from the rich class, which preferred to operate under the undocumented regime without causing any harassment in the business and trade circles, he maintained. Sharing latest data of broadening the tax-base, Shahid Hussain Asad said that 60,000 rich people had complied with the directives of the directorate of intelligence IR and subsequently filed their income tax returns under Income Tax Ordinance 2001.
The provisional assessment under section 122(c) of the Income Tax Ordinance had been completed in 28,000 cases, he added. In 28,000 cases, the intelligence arm of the FBR had raised tax demand of Rs 7.7 billion. Out of the raised income tax demand, the agency had managed to recover an amount of Rs 700 million from the potential persons, FBR Member IR added. It is important to mention that TRACKER is the only FBR system which shows consolidated data for discovering the new taxpayers. This is one of the most effective means of broadening the tax-base using third party information.