Sales tax officials go on strike

The sales tax officials on Saturday went on strike for an indefinite period in protest against the arrest of their colleagues by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). The striking officials further said if the arrested officials were not released immediately, they would go on hunger strike from Monday.
The six sales tax officials were arrested on Monday last for their alleged involvement in fake invoice refund case, which was registered in 2004. The arrested officials are Superintendent Naseem Ahmed, senior auditor Zahid Bari, Inspector Muneer, Deputy Superintendent Tanveer, Deputy Superintendent Qamar Naqi and Saleem Akhtar.
The officials at the Sales Tax House here said: "The action has been taken following an investigation by the Customs Intelligence against Bawan Shah Group of Companies, which was allegedly involved in 16 illegal tax exemption cases."
The striking officials, talking to Business Recorder, described the NAB action as unfair, and said: "All the objectionable refund cases had been processed under the law and the arrested staff members had followed the rules and regulation of SRO, which was issued by the higher authorities."
They said that the Sales Tax House had a computerised set-up (star software) to process all sales tax invoices, which could not process unregistered and fake invoices.
They said the software was showing all these invoices as valid entries, and added: "If the computer software indicates something valid, the STH officials will certainly approve it as valid, which should not be considered official's mistake." They said that in this particular case, the officials followed the same methods, hence the action against them was illogical.
They demanded of the government to ensure error-free and updated refund data collection on the system to avoid such cases in future. They said the NAB charges against the officials claiming that these officials should have physically checked the availability of the claims before refunding the claims.
According to the Sales Tax Act, the officials were empowered to check the location of any company in the country, they added. The striking officials said that they had the right to follow the Sale Tax Act to physically check the existence of a company, but the higher authorities had always restricted them from doing so, which ultimately resulted in the arrest of their colleagues. "If any one of us intend to use his powers, the authorities will suspend him on charge of harassment," they alleged.
Justifying the strike, they demanded early release of the arrested officials. Meanwhile, Collector of Sales Tax and Federal Excise Junaid Akram, when contacted refused to comment on the NAB action. He, however, said that the department would provide legal support to the arrested officials.