Public complaints, taxpayers’ cases: FTO concerned at FBR’s attitude

ISLAMABAD: Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) has expressed grave concern over the cold blooded attitude of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) while handling public complaints and hardship cases of taxpayers.

According to an order of the FTO issued on Tuesday, Tax Ombudsman has directed FBR to facilitate the employees of the school and get the particulars corrected in the CPR.

Briefly, the complainant was a Principal of Workers Welfare Higher Secondary School for Girls, Multan (the school). An amount of Rs69,885 was deducted from the salary of School employees under Section 149 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 (the Ordinance) for the month of August, 2020 and deposited in the Government treasury. Inadvertently, tax period was mentioned as 2019 instead of 2020.

The principal applied for correction to RTQ, and this request was forwarded to RTO, Islamabad which has been rejected by RTO, Islamabad.

Therefore complainant took up matter with Federal Tax Ombudsman. The complaint was referred to secretary revenue division for comments, The, RTO, Islamabad instead of facilitating the complainant has forwarded comments of Islamabad stating that Complainant, Principal Workers Welfare Higher Secondary School for Girls Multan is not an affectee/party in the CPR, therefore, not entitled to apply for said correction.

Prima facie, the complaint filed is without any substance which may be rejected. However, FTO has observed that the contention of the department CPR Coordinator-lR, RTO, Islamabad was incorrect that the principal being the complainant was not a direct party therefore not entitled for applying correction of particulars in CPR.

The principal being incharge of the institution was fully justified to safeguard the interest of employees of her school who could not take credit of tax deducted because of wrong mentioning of tax year in the CPR. Moreover, it was a fact that organizational FTNs were used by all sub-offices of the given organization for tax withholding purposes.

Interestingly RTO Multan raised no objection while taxes were deducted and deposited by the complainant, as Principal by using the same FTN. But when the same person applied for a harmless correction neither RTO Multan was ready to shoulder its responsibility nor the central CPR office at Islamabad is attentive to the genuine grievances of the complainant.

This attitude reflects the cold blooded indifference of state functionaries while handling public complaints. If the Circular No.1 (2)-SS(BDT)18-CPR/280845-R dated 30.12.2019 fails to respond to a genuine problem, it must be compassionately reviewed.

It was therefore a case of clear hardship having no revenue implication and yet the Department was denying to facilitate the Complainant on the strength of Circular No.1(2)-SS(BDT)18-CPR/280845-R.

Accordingly, Tax ombudsman has directed FBR into the matter and get the particulars corrected in the CPR enabling the Employees of the School to take credit of tax already deducted in the Year 2020 and report compliance within 30 days.

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