The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has decided to withdraw special pay package/allowance of the tax officials, who would fail to utilise the Computerised Risk-Based Evaluation of Sales Tax (Crest) for detecting discrepancies in the sales tax returns/statements and refund claims.
Sources told Business Recorder here on Friday that the issue of Crest was discussed threadbare during the Chief Commissioner conference held at the FBR House. It was pointed out that the FBR has assigned certain Grade 17-20 tax officials the job to monitor sales tax data through the Crest. It is their responsibility to regularly monitor and utilise data of the Crest for checking discrepancies in the sales tax returns. In case these officials fail to perform their duties, the FBR will withdraw their special allowance or double pay package.
As far as training of Crest is concerned, it has been decided by the Chief Commissioner conference that nine months training is enough for the concerned tax officials. Now, the Crest would be fully utilised by the tax officials assigned for this duty without any further delay.
During the presentation of the Crest, it was explained that the Crest had detected cases of billion of rupees unverifiable sales and purchases in the past. Quite few prosecution cases were registered against such detection. The Crest is also helping the compliant taxpayers even in those areas where Web Portal which captured returns is technically complex.
The Board is also utilising Crest system to ensure filing of withholding statements by sales tax registered persons and enforce return filing by non-filers of income tax and sales tax returns. The system is cross-matching the sales tax purchases with the income tax statements filed by sales tax registered persons. Due to amendment in Finance Act, 2013 in Section 153, every sales tax registered person has been declared withholding agent.
It has been found in the Crest that certain sales tax registered persons, showing purchases in their sales tax returns are not filing withholding statements. The FBR's computerised system for cross-matching and analysis of sales tax returns, known as Crest (Computerised Risk Evaluation for Sales Tax) recently helped in the detection and recovery of evaded tax in the textile sector in the past. The system was enhanced and rolled-out to other sectors. In order to avoid any legal challenge Crest has been defined in Section 2(5AC) of the Sales Tax Act, 1990.
Purchases in respect of which any discrepancy is indicated by Crest, or where the input tax is not verifiable in the supply chain, have been made ineligible for input tax adjustment by insertion of a new clause (caa) in section 8(1) of the Sales Tax Act, 1990. The term 'supply chain' has also been defined in section 2(33A) of the Act. During the conference, tax authorities decided that recovery of taxes be made in line with the decision of Lahore High Court Rawalpindi Bench. The court allowed tax department to initiate recovery in cases where stay is beyond 180 days period.
Comments
Comments are closed.