The Federal Tax Ombudsman organised an awareness workshop on its project titled 'public awareness and advocacy about dispute resolution mechanism of federal tax ombudsman' for medium and small-scale enterprises, here on Wednesday. FTO Director General Muhammad Asif highlighted the historical perspective of the Ombudsman's Office and gave a detailed presentation on the working of the FTO offices.
He said there were 150 ombudsman's offices in the world. "In Pakistan, the ombudsman's office was established in 1983, while in 2000, an independent office of the Federal Tax Ombudsman came into being," he said. Asif elaborated on the complaint filing procedure and other available facilities provided by the FTO offices to the aggrieved taxpayers.
M Siddique, Advisor (Implementation & Monitoring) said the mandate of FTO offices was to ensure prompt and inexpensive redress of the taxpayers' genuine grievances against the maladministration of the tax employees of the Federal Board of Revenue.
The adviser said that around 1,807 complaints were handled by the FTO offices across the country annually. He highlighted the FTO success stories since its establishment in 2000.
Siddique said taxpayers could file complaints with the FTO by courier, by hand, by email or online. He said the services of FTO offices were free of charge and citizen-friendly and that the complaints were decided within 60 days.
The adviser said Form-A was available on the FTO website for taxpayers to lodge complaints and that the form could be obtained from the FTO offices and main secretariat as well. The traders gave feedback to the FTO team, which comprised senior adviser Khalid Masood and advisers M Siddique and Kazim Hussain.
Zafar Iqbal Siddiqui, President of Chamber of Small Traders (CST), said that number of taxpayers had been increased by 0.4 million and revenue was increased by 20 percent. "In spite of that traders were being harassed and victimised whenever they move to Federal Tax Ombudsman or any court of law. They not only freeze their bank accounts but also draw the amount by threatening the bank managers." He further said that Intelligence and Investigation Cell of FBR also harassed them.
Sheikh Faisal Saeed Ehtisham-ul-Haq also spoke.
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