The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) will provide web-based tracking system (Tracker) access to all the Regional Tax Offices (RTOs) for discovering new taxpayers after successful operation of the system at RTO Lahore for documentation of the national economy.
Sources told Business Recorder here on Monday that the system gathered information from two different sources for tracing undocumented persons. Firstly, it entered the computerised national identity card number (CNIC) of the person into the FBR Web-Portal and check status of the person in the tax department. If a person is a registered taxpayer with valid National Tax Number (NTN), the details of income tax, sales tax and customs duty is made instantly available on the screen.
The complete tax profile of the taxpayer is displayed on the screen particularly clearances made from ports through ''One Custom''s system, if any. The system would immediately tell whether the person is NTN holder or not for further processing of the case.
In case no information is available on the FBR Web-Portal, the Tracker immediately access the third party data from several sources pertaining to property, motor vehicles registration, defence housing authority, capital value tax data, school fees, clubs, foreign travels and other information collected from various sources.
The web-based system collects information about the person and transactions made by him where CNICs have been used. With ample evidence, the system generates notices to the concerned person to justify his income and come into the tax net. In the presence of authentic data, the concerned person has no choice, but to obtain the NTN, file the due return and deposit the tax in the national exchequer.
Presently, this internet web-based application is only available in the RTO Lahore where system has detected some astonishing cases registered with the tax department. The transactions detected through Tracker gives an example that many potential persons prefer to operate under the undocumented regime.
For example, a person locally purchased/traded 242 vehicles using different NTNs during one year, but only paid Rs one lakh and 21 thousands as tax. In other cases, persons purchasing luxury vehicles or engaged in trading of 5-10 vehicles have also been brought into the documented regime using the Tracker.
The person was discovered with the help of Tracker and brought into the tax net. Keeping in view the successful application of the system at Lahore, TRACKER was also discussed during the last Chief Commissioner conference. Sources said that the system maintains information on the basis of Tax Year for collection of updated information.
Keeping in view successful experience of the Tracker at Lahore, the new system would be utilised throughout the country. Another presentation of the new system is expected to be given to the FBR Chairman by the concerned authorities. According to sources, Tracker is the only FBR system, which shows consolidated data for discovering the new taxpayers.
This is one of the most effective means for broadening the tax-base by using third party information. During the exercise, the TRACKER equipped with information three lakh persons of Lahore issued notices to a large number of persons who used the system in the past.
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