National tax policy conference rescheduled to November 19

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has rescheduled 'First National Tax Policy Conference' for November 19, instead of November 11-12, to chalk out a 'national tax policy' with the help of tax collectors. In this connection, the FBR issued instructions to the field formations on Friday. According to the FBR instructions, the first National Tax Policy Conference has been rescheduled and now it will be held on November 19, instead of 11-12th November, 2011.
The tax policy formulation process in Pakistan has traditionally remained skewed, while the organised economic interests have invariably found their way through, got themselves heard, and had their demands mirrored in the tax policy. The field collectors who, despite being equal stakeholders in the eventual policy outcomes, hardly ever got their concerns reflected in the annual policy diktats dished out to them for implementation in the shape of annual Finance Acts.
Such practice of formulating tax policy by exclusion of the tax collectors had many a time resulted in exercise of theoretically irrational, economically flawed, legally inconsistent, and unimplementable policy choices, that might have bred a sense of alienation and defeatism among them. This paradigm needs a drastic shift in the wake of the unavoidable requirement for effective and implementable tax laws that can plug revenue-leakages, the FBR said.
The FBR said that the richest and most abundant source of suitable tax policy triggers are the field operators themselves, who can best pinpoint innovative revenue-spinners, as well as the glitches, gaps, and irritants in the laws. In this view of the matter, a two-day National Tax Policy Conference has been scheduled for mid-November, 2011, to afford an opportunity to all volunteering Chief Commissioners and Directors General to stand up before their peers and present their tax policy vision and propose amendments for the next year in respect of all three inland taxes.
The FBR stated that the process, at the closure of the conference, will leave IR Policy Wing with a healthy inventory of tax policy bits to work with through the remainder of the year ie attempt to calculate the revenue-tag of each policy option, strike balance between competing economic and political interests, and compose law within the governing legal scheme. Depending upon the success of the proposed conference, the activity is likely to be repeated in March 2012 as a wrap up for the year, and eventually institutionalised in the future as a fulcrum of the tax policy formulation in the country.
In order to trickle this spirit of inclusiveness and participation down to the lowest rung, it is expected that an identical consultative process will be replicated at all levels to firm up and solicit tax policy inputs from all officers of the field formations.