Reportedly, Chairman of Tax Reforms Commission is a tax practitioner, well aware of depth of tax waters and intricate tax machinery. The Commission should be cognisant that real trouble is with tax adjudication process, terminating at gateway of the superior courts. Cumbersome texts of the laws and tax officers' play feature only next to that. Speaking adjudication orders are help to do away with not only complexities of the laws, SROs thereunder and sorts of doings by tax officials. Through backward linkage, these may help the legislature to mend where it should. This is when deficiencies of laws, calling for amends, surface through the judicial process.
Needed may be positioning (retired) superior court judges, versed in tax laws, to report whether adjudication orders issued are true to titles on these orders. The judges would improve quality of adjudication orders delivered by the Appellate Tribunal's benches as also orders to be had from adjudication officers in the command of federal or provincial governments. Involvement of these judges with 'post adjudication process' should enable delivery of what 'it should be' by upping skills of the adjudication officers. In this scenario, Judicial Members of the Appellate Tribunal may find themselves more effective.
Within or outside the Tax Ombudsman establishments, but working independently, the aforesaid judges should give findings to the Ministry of Law, as the final arbiters. This should be an administrative arrangement, independent to what the law provides. Because it would not touch the law. Law should move as it does, as per its words. Law process will continue unhampered.
What is proposed, will not reduce tax collection, it will just encourage and facilitate flow to the exchequer what is due to the government - with little back flows. It may increase flow of tax funds to the exchequer. Transformation ushered, by way of speaking orders emphasised, will tremendously reduce administration and litigation costs of the tax collection agencies.
Simultaneously, I would urge the Commission to take care of SRB, PRA & KPRA tax machinery. Provincial capitals are not 'no go areas' for the Commission. In the national cause, the Commission may have formulations in relation to provinces, suo motu. It may thus go to tame the 'inqalab', shouted by some people, stopping men on the street from getting wild.
To start with postings of retired superior courts judges at Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad may be made in relation to all tax laws administered by FBR, SRB, KPRA & PRA etc, without touching any law. These may form part of the FTO's system only for the sake of formality.
Heads of tax offices who receive reports that their Commissioners / Collectors Appeal excelled a race to reject appeals of the assessees may be put to task by the Commission. To be cited in this connection is a Provincial Revenue Board Chairman who was given the good news that his Commissioner Appeal, to get a pat on his back, had rejected 99% of the appeals filed. The relevant Board may be required to explain its 'simplicity' to accept the report as such without probing deep into its implications and projecting what could be ahead of the system in terms of litigations to crop-up and morale of its officers.
If the Tax Reforms Commission takes this proposal for evaluation to the end of making a law, the proposal will be torpedoed ... I will not say by the bureaucrats. Let not that happen. Having the suggested system put in place should be possible through administrative measures, aided by the Law Ministry, Registrar, Supreme Court etc Also by former Chief Justices of Pakistan, Ajmal Mian and Saeed-uz-Zaman etc.
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