A sub-committee of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has been constituted to take up the matter of Auditor General of Pakistan's inaccessibility to the record of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has established a committee comprising Auditor General of Pakistan and Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to resolve the issue pertaining to the auditors' access to the record of FBR. The sub-committee met under convenor Shaikh Rohale Asghar and discussed the audit report of FBR for year 2007-08.
Audit officials argued before the PAC that FBR has not been providing access to its record for audit purpose. The Constitution of Pakistan and mandate of AGP empowers officials to access all kinds of government's record for audit purposes. They asked: "How is the FBR denying access to IRIS system when audit has allowed to seek accounts of secret agencies?"
Auditor General of Pakistan wrote a letter to the FBR chairman for provision of record to audit officials but FBR is yet to respond. Chairman FBR Tariq Bajwa informed the committee that the management is following a mutual decision taken in 2013 which provided a way forward with limited access to record. In 2013, the Federal Board of Revenue had agreed to give access to soft data of the registered taxpayers to the AGP on a case-to-case basis. The FBR agreed to provide access to FBR's soft data to the Director General Audit, on case to case basis as follows: The display of the data fields will be based on following access keys corresponding to the respective type of data ie NTN (for Income Tax); computerised payment receipt (CPR) Number (for Tax Payment Data) and goods declaration (GD) Number (for Customs Data). The chairman of committee set up a committee which will review the existing agreement and resolve the matter.
The audit official further said that no senior official of FBR attended the Departmental Accounts Committee (DAC) meetings; hence they should be bound to attend the meetings, so that audit could reach to any decision mutually on various audit objections. The audit further pointed out some 14 cases which were under process by FBR for last many years. The sub committee directed FBR to expedite the pending cases and report within one month.
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