The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has decided to obtain information of the corporate entities, traders and companies from the business related websites including 'Yellow Pages of Pakistan' to broaden the tax base.
Sources told Business Recorder on Wednesday that new strategy for broadening the tax-base in 2007-2008 has been dispatched to the Director Generals, Large Taxpayer Units (LTUs), Karachi/Lahore and Regional Tax Offices (RTOs). The FBR has identified new areas for bringing unregistered companies into the tax net.
First, income tax department would keep a close liaison with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) to detect corporate non-filers of income tax returns.
Secondly, regional tax officials would utilise information available on the websites like Apna Karachi.com; Apnalahore.com, yellow pages and other websites containing business and corporate information of unregistered companies.
In consultation with the field offices, the board would create an updated database of all immovable property transactions; motor vehicles; telephone subscribers; utilisation of withholding taxes as means of documentation and conduct sectoral studies.
Sources said the number of return filers up to June 2007 was 1.8 million. Break-up showed that 0.6 million salaried class is filing returns and remaining are traders, importers, exporters and manufacturers. The number of return filers has been increased due to Universal Self Assessment Scheme (USAS); reduction in tax rates, enforcement of filing of statements by exporters, importers, contractors, suppliers and salaried class.
It may be recalled that the board is repeatedly dispatching the same strategy of increasing number of taxpayers to the regional offices. The same instructions were repeated time and again for the regional tax offices. It seemed that the board's instructions are not properly implemented or field formations do not have enough capacity to broaden the tax-base.
Similarly, a computer programme 'NEXUS' was devised to match data of taxpayers and collect information from external sources to identify potential taxpayers. However, increase in the number of taxpayers as a result of 'NEXUS' utilisation is also not visible.
The board wanted to utilise information available with the websites containing information about the businessmen. But, it is not clear that a large number of un-registered trading houses, retail outlets, wholesalers, dealers, jewellers etc are visible in posh markets of major cities. It seemed strange that the tax officials would identify potential taxpayers from websites instead of directly obtaining information from traders operating in leading markets.
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