ST refund to exporter: FBR yet to implement FTO's recommendation

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has yet to implement the unchallenged recommendation by Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) in favour of an exporter regarding issuance of sales tax refund pending for the last 15 years.
A tax expert said that solely on the judicious intervention of the FTO sales tax refund has been partly issued after a lapse of 15 long years and Refund Payment Order pertaining to the year 2000 was issued in January 2015 by the RTO Lahore but till date recommendations issued by FTO have not been fully implemented in letter and spirit.
When contacted, a tax expert told this scribe that the office of the FTO has proved to be of great help in redressal of genuine grievances and hardships caused to the aggrieved taxpayers as a result of maladministration and maltreatment by the field formations.
For the last 15 years a senior citizen of 72 years of age is begging from pillar to post to seek his lawful right of refund from the FBR even after having unchallenged Recommendations issued by FTO, where neither any review has been preferred nor any representation has been filed before President.
Complainant in the case, Muhammad Ramzan, a senior citizen shared details of this unique case, in which he is running from pillar to post to seek his lawful right. The case of sales tax refund is pending with the department for a long time.
Despite passage of considerable time, the department had failed to implement the unchallenged recommendations.
In his order it has been specifically observed by the FTO that in any case the statute requires no proof of physical transfer of goods from supplier to buyer as a pre-condition for making an input tax refund claim and blacklisting cannot be made effective retrospectively especially, when blacklisting is due to irregularities detected in the suppliers dealings with buyers other than the complainant.
It is a well-settled principle of law that a past and closed transaction cannot be reopened especially when a beneficiary has no role in the irregularity committed by the other party.
The findings by FTO further states that there was a protracted delay in the disposal of the refund claims of the complainant.
The complainant was not served with a single notice intimating deficiencies in the documentation filed nor was his explanation sought on any aspect pertinent to the claims.
The complainant contends that after the documents were re-filed, the departmental functionaries started approaching him for payment of illegal gratification to dispose of the refund claims. Protracted delay in issuance of refund tantamount to maladministration and the delay also create the right to receive compensation under Section 67 of the Act.
The FTO recommended FBR to ensure that due refund/compensation is promptly issued, as per law, with details of sales tax refund cases pending for more than one year across Pakistan, FTO order added.