Over 15 percent of total rewards to customs, sales tax and central excise officials sanctioned during July 2004-December 2005 lacked fulfilment of the laid down criteria and their cases were under the process of appeals and adjudication.
Official sources told Business Recorder on Saturday that the Central Board of Revenue (CBR), during the internal audit, had detected certain discrepancies in the issuance of rewards. The regional collectors were given the task to verify the authenticity of rewards amounting to Rs 250 million during the period under review.
The Collectorates'' point of view was that most of the rewards had been sanctioned as per rules, but some irregularities were also detected during audit proceedings.
It was found that rewards were sanctioned to the staff of regional collectorates in violation of rules/regulations. Stenographers of the collectors are not eligible to claim rewards. But, they were awarded, though the amount involved was very negligible.
In other cases, rewards were also issued in cases where recoveries had been made but the cases were still under the adjudication/appeal process. Under the law, it is necessary that the rewards be sanctioned only after completion of the legal formalities, including adjudication.
It has been estimated that over 15 percent of the sanctioned amount was distributed as reward money among the staff whose appeals were not settled by courts. Under Excise laws, 25 percent of the total reward money is legally authorised for distribution among the claimants, even if the case is under adjudication.
On the other hand, customs and sales tax officials are misusing this provision and claiming rewards despite the fact that this facility is not available under customs and sales tax reward rules.
During investigation, it had been brought to the notice of the Board that sales tax officials of Collectorate of Sales Tax and Federal Excise Rawalpindi had claimed rewards of over Rs 3 million, which was declared illegal by the Directorate of Revenue Receipt Audit (DRRA) during 2004-05.
Officials said that the DRRA had conveyed to the Board that the sales tax officials of the collectorate had made a false case against certain companies for claiming reward. The collectorate obtained the reward on the plea that the concerned sales tax officials had detected mobile phone companies which did not deposit the tax collected from new subscribers. They conducted audit, which led to recovery of substantial amount, and sales tax officials became eligible to claim reward. On the other hand, the companies claimed that the tax was duly deposited at their own initiative. DRRA objected that the sales tax officials had made a story, just for claiming reward money.
The CBR constituted a committee headed by Member Audit, with Directorate General of Intelligence and Investigation, Customs and Excise and Directorate General, Inspection and Internal Audit as members. The investigating committee was given assignment to see whether the reward was genuinely claimed or not.
Meanwhile, the informer has deposited the disputed reward money in the national exchequer. The committee has not yet given its findings to the Board, sources added.
Comments
Comments are closed.