CBR: a divided house

The Central Board of Revenue (CBR), our apex revenue collection agency at federal level, gives a picture of a divided house. The petty inter-group fighting between Income Tax and Customs & Excise cadres over the recent transfer of 26 Deputy Commissioners of Income Tax to Sales Tax department has exposed the tall claim of unification of all personnel under one autonomous Pakistan Revenue Service as part of the great tax reform agenda.
According to a Press report (DAWN, December 24, 2004), the Customs and Excise group had sought intervention of Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz, in the matter. It has prepared two separate presentations under section 22(2) of the Civil Servants Act 1973 against CBR's decision, which would be sent to the prime minister and Chairman CBR, Abdullah Yousuf. The Customs & Excise Group has raised the following issues:
1. CBR, through a notification issued on October 29, 2004 transferred 26 Deputy Commissioners of the Income Tax Group to various collectorates of Customs, Central Excise and Sales Tax located all over the country. But the very next day, CBR issued a corrigendum notice and partially modified the earlier notification to the extent of the words "customs and excise group" which were to be read as "sales tax department".
There is no sales tax department with the government of Pakistan and, therefore, the notification issued on October 30, 2004 is a nullity in the eye of the law.
2. Transferring of officers of income tax group to sales tax department is a "decoy meant to camouflage the wholesale insertion of income tax group officers into the customs and excise group".
3. In order of priority of choices for various occupational groups exercised by the CSS [Central Superior Services] officers coming through competitive examination each year, the customs and excise group is normally the first and second choice, while the income tax is normally the fourth and the fifth choice. Consequently only the officers on the top of nation-wide merit can make it to the customs and excise group, while officers who are lower in the nation-wide merit get allocation to the income tax group.
4. The transfer order of the CBR is practically an attempt to make a backdoor entry of a large number of income tax group officers into the customs and excise group where they had already failed to make it on open merit.
5. This backdoor entry has laid the foundation for the ultimate destruction of the whole system of holding the competitive examination conducted by the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) for merit based induction into various occupational groups of the CSS.
6. If transfer decision is not reversed, it will open flood-gates of backdoor entries.
7. This CBR's decision of transfers of the income tax group officials took away a large number of posts which otherwise would have been available to the officers of customs and excise group.
8. The Central Board of Revenue Act 1924 enjoins that all policy decisions taken by the CBR should be taken by the Board-in-Council. It is very surprising that such an unprecedented major policy decision was not even taken once to the Board-in-Council for discussion purpose.
These objections by the Customs and Excise Group are valid within the existing structure of Civil Services of Pakistan where various groups are allocated by Public Service Commission on the basis of merit and choice of successful candidates. Any permanent transfer of personnel from lower-merit group to a higher-merit group is against the well-recognised constitutional right of protection of law and fairness.
The stance of CBR is that these are routine transfers under section 10 of Civil Servants Act 1973. However, if the CBR is to be converted into a unified Pakistan Revenue Services for better management of tax collection, both the cadres will have to merge into one group.
While raising strong protest against transfer of income tax officials to Sales Tax Department, the Customs & Excise cadre has conveniently forgotten that once it was part of Income Tax Service. It was a wrong move to hand over sales tax to Customs Group as Income Tax Officers were better trained and equipped to handle this type of law. It is an undeniable fact that they still are in a better position to manage sales tax collection than customs and excise people.
It is a matter of record that in the early 1990s a large number of officers from different CSS groups were transferred to Income Tax Department and no hue and cry was created by the said cadre. Within a span of 10 years, the overwhelming majority of the transferees opted to go back to their parent groups and a few of them were forced to do so.
The mere transfers under section 10 of the Civil Servants Act cannot be construed as "merger" as wrongly projected and argued by the Customs & Excise Group.
There appears to be a lot of confusion in CBR itself. On the one hand there is a move to convert it into one unified Pakistan Revenue Service and on the other identity of income tax and customs groups will continue to exist separately. It is a dichotomy that needs to be addressed.
The Chairman CBR, while replying to queries raised by probationers of 31st Common Batch of Income Tax and Customs Groups at Directorate General of Income Tax (Training and Research) at Lahore on November 14, 2004, said that Customs and Income Tax Groups "will not be merged and both will continue as two separate services in future.
However, services of Sales Tax, Central Excise and Income Tax department will be housed under one roof in order to integrate their performance and efficiency as well as to facilitate the public". This statement nullifies the concept of one unified revenue service that should comprise tax professionals and not persons coming through Central Superior Services (CSS) Examination and selection process.
The CSS itself is a curse for this country because it is a unity of mediocrity and club of sycophants. Its members prefer self-interest as supreme to national interest (Alas I was once a member of CSS and that too part of Income Tax Group!).
If we want to make our revenue machinery an efficient and people-friendly organisation, it is necessary to reconstitute CBR as an autonomous Pakistan Revenue Service (PRS) fully insulated from corruption and external political pressures. It is high time that income tax and customs groups give up their petty inter-group skirmishing and hostilities.
Instead officers should work together to become professional tax collectors who know their job and perform national duty of collection of taxes with grace and praise.