Speedy sales tax refund: 500 exporters listed under Streams software

The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) has decided to notify the names of 300 large-scale companies and textile units of Sialkot and Multan for speedy payment of sales tax refund to the exporters through a new software package named as 'Streams'. At present, 192 companies are working under the Streams and a list of 308 more companies will be issued to ensure refund payment to maximum exporters. Initially, a total of 500 exporters will be able to operate under the facility.
The selection of refund claimants of Sialkot and Multan is under way. The registered units of Sales Tax House Karachi; Collectorate of Sales Tax and Central Excise Faisalabad; Collectorate of Sales Tax and Central Excise Lahore have been notified whereas units of Collectorates of Sales Tax and Central Excise, Sialkot and Multan will soon obtain refund under computerised system.
The system will ensure an efficient and transparent refund mechanism and speedy payment to genuine refund claimants eliminating chances of undue refund payments. Sales Tax Automated Refund Repository (Starr) was established in February, 2003, which provided a basis for further improvements in automation.
Accordingly, re-engineered refund procedures based on principles of risk management, claimants with low-risk will be paid immediately through a relatively simplified process, while cases with high risk will be audited through Streams to be effective from March 31, 2005.
The new system is expected to be seamless, more efficient and will handle refund cases in a broader risk analysis perspective as against present capacity limitation of document/invoice verification.
Streams will maintain taxpayer profiles based on multi-tax data of regular claimants and suppliers. The data provided by the claimants will be analysed by using computer software, which will give risk assessment of the claim for allocating green channel (for immediate payment) or yellow channel (for further scrutiny) or red channel (for initiation of detailed audit).
The project is more user-friendly as the processing tiers have been reduced. It envisages greater transparency, as refund claimant queue breaking is now not possible.