The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has recovered over Rs 7.4 billion withholding tax from 12,450 registered persons during tax year 2009, reflecting large-scale recovery drive on national level to improve collection in the last quarter of current fiscal year 2009-10.
Sources told Business Recorder on Monday that the FBR has compiled a report on the overall results of the enforcement actions taken in the field formations during 2009-10. According to FBR data compiled in May 2010, the FBR collected over and above Rs 2.8 billion from 1,819 enlisted withholding agents, who had withheld sales tax on supplies and other deduction of sales tax. Over Rs 2.8 billion was recovered from those withholding agents, who were required to deduct/withhold sales tax.
The board recovered Rs 600.17 million as penalty in 75 cases of minimum tax liability on indirect tax side. Within the category of sales tax/federal excise, the FBR identified 120,702 short-filers, null-filers and short payers during current fiscal year. Out of 1,603 short-filers and null-filers who were served notices, only 101 filed sales tax and federal excise returns. Thus, 1502 short-filers failed to deposit due amount of tax during this period.
The FBR recovered Rs 385.60 million from registered persons with the sales tax department. In case of direct taxes, the FBR detected 31,397 short-filers of income tax returns for tax year 2009. Resultantly, it issued notices to 20,765 registered short-filers and short-payers during this period. Around 6,335 short-filers filed returns and deposited Rs 2.312 million as tax, penalty and default surcharge.
The data further showed that FBR detected 138,503 non-filers and stop filers of sales tax returns. Out of 22,638 notices served to the non-filers and stop-filers, only 860 responded to these notices. The sales tax and federal excise, paid with the returns, stood at nearly Rs 3.44 billion. The non-compliance level in the sales tax regime was evident from the fact that 21,778 non-filers failed to respond to the notices issued by the sales tax department. The same trend was observed on the direct tax side where total 226,565 non-filers and stop filers were detected during 2009. Out of 85,456 notices issued to the non-filers, 22,034 non-filers filed returns along with payment of tax to the tune of Rs 3.422 million.
This data clearly reflects an alarming situation as 63,422 non-filers of returns did not comply with the notices. The data of 63,422 registered non-filers reflects the fact that field offices had failed to enforce the return filing even in case of registered units during tax year 2009.
The data for the tax year 2009 further showed that the FBR detected 4,056 non-registered non-filers of sales tax and federal excise returns. Through e-enrolment, the FBR registered 8,922 persons. This showed that FBR e-filing system had registered double number of taxpayers with the FBR Web-Portal as compared to detection of 4,506 non-registered non-filers of sales tax. The sales tax/excise paid along with the returns stood at Rs 432.60 million during the period under review.
As far as direct tax is concerned, the FBR detected 184,349 non-registered taxpayers during 2009. The new taxpayers, registered electronically, stood at 77,384. The FBR received 16,182 returns from the newly registered taxpayers as compared to total 77,384 registrations. Total amount deposited along with tax was Rs 30.22 million.
The data of 2008 also showed the same trend. The registration data showed that out of 4,124 non-registered persons, only 1,244 obtained registration with the sales tax department. There were 102,825 non-registered persons on direct tax side, and 37,483 persons were registered with the tax department.
The FBR identified 107,335 non-filers of sales tax returns during 2008. Out of 71,026 notices issued to the non-filers, only 888 filed returns during this period. In case of direct taxes, 336,129 non-filers were identified and only 49,906 filed returns.
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