Central Board of Revenue (CBR) Chairman Abdullah Yusuf has expressed concern over tax officers working as private tax practitioners and directed the commissioners of income tax appeals and collectors of customs, sales tax and central excise adjudication to dismiss all such officers if found guilty. During the fourth quarterly conference of appeals and adjudication here on Wednesday, the CBR chairman was astonished to hear that income tax assessing officers of the commissionerates and lower staff of the collectorates are indulging in private practices to favour taxpayers and guide them to get decision against the department.
These tax officers not only misguide the taxpayers to obtain huge fees, but also assist the taxpayers to obtain decisions against the tax authorities.
Officials present in the meeting quoted Yusuf as saying that the tax officials should immediately investigate the matter and take disciplinary action against those found guilty, and if necessary, powers should be used to terminate the services of these officers.
"These officials should not be spared and major penalty of removal from service should be imposed on them. If the authorities have names of people involved in private practice, they should be immediately taken to task," Yusuf added.
Addressing the conference, the CBR chairman said that the purpose of the conference has been achieved as we have held useful discussion. "I must say that the performance of all the collectorates has been outstanding, despite huge deficiency in the infrastructure it has been an excellent job done by reducing the substantial number of pending cases of appeals and adjudication," he added.
Earlier, Saeed Ahmad Zaidi, Member (Legal), informed the participants that total pendency in cases of appeals of income tax on July 1, 2004 was 35,753. Later, 18,536 fresh appeals were received, thus, the total number stood at 54,289 cases, involving Rs 37.3 billion.
During the last 10 months 40,208 appeals were disposed of and the amount involved in these decided cases is Rs 16.4 billion. The remaining number of appeals is 14,081.
Regarding pendency of the adjudication and appeal cases of indirect taxes (customs, sales tax and central excise), Zaidi said that there were 10,892 cases of adjudication, involving revenue of Rs 36.2 billion and 2,434 cases of appeals, involving revenue of Rs 0.7 billion on July 1, 2004. The cases disposed of so far is 6,601 of adjudication, involving Rs 25.2 billion and 2,158 cases of appeals, involving Rs 1 billion.
The CBR chairman said, "This is really a good performance and we will clear all the backlog by the end of the year." He stressed upon the collectors and commissioners to continue quick and quality disposal of cases, purely on merit.
Member (Customs) Mohammad Ramzan Bhatti and other senior officials of the CBR were also present on the occasion.
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