AIRLINK 189.64 Decreased By ▼ -7.01 (-3.56%)
BOP 10.09 Decreased By ▼ -0.05 (-0.49%)
CNERGY 6.68 Decreased By ▼ -0.01 (-0.15%)
FCCL 34.14 Increased By ▲ 1.12 (3.39%)
FFL 17.09 Increased By ▲ 0.44 (2.64%)
FLYNG 23.83 Increased By ▲ 1.38 (6.15%)
HUBC 126.05 Decreased By ▼ -1.24 (-0.97%)
HUMNL 13.79 Decreased By ▼ -0.11 (-0.79%)
KEL 4.77 Increased By ▲ 0.01 (0.21%)
KOSM 6.58 Increased By ▲ 0.21 (3.3%)
MLCF 43.28 Increased By ▲ 1.06 (2.51%)
OGDC 224.96 Increased By ▲ 11.93 (5.6%)
PACE 7.38 Increased By ▲ 0.37 (5.28%)
PAEL 41.74 Increased By ▲ 0.87 (2.13%)
PIAHCLA 17.19 Increased By ▲ 0.37 (2.2%)
PIBTL 8.41 Increased By ▲ 0.12 (1.45%)
POWER 9.05 Increased By ▲ 0.23 (2.61%)
PPL 193.09 Increased By ▲ 9.52 (5.19%)
PRL 37.34 Decreased By ▼ -0.93 (-2.43%)
PTC 24.02 Decreased By ▼ -0.05 (-0.21%)
SEARL 94.54 Decreased By ▼ -0.57 (-0.6%)
SILK 0.99 Decreased By ▼ -0.01 (-1%)
SSGC 39.93 Decreased By ▼ -0.38 (-0.94%)
SYM 17.77 Decreased By ▼ -0.44 (-2.42%)
TELE 8.66 Decreased By ▼ -0.07 (-0.8%)
TPLP 12.39 Increased By ▲ 0.18 (1.47%)
TRG 62.65 Decreased By ▼ -1.71 (-2.66%)
WAVESAPP 10.28 Decreased By ▼ -0.16 (-1.53%)
WTL 1.75 Decreased By ▼ -0.04 (-2.23%)
YOUW 3.97 Decreased By ▼ -0.03 (-0.75%)
BR100 11,814 Increased By 90.4 (0.77%)
BR30 36,234 Increased By 874.6 (2.47%)
KSE100 113,247 Increased By 609 (0.54%)
KSE30 35,712 Increased By 253.6 (0.72%)

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has frozen 32 bank accounts of all six District Municipal Corporations (DMCs) and recovered withholding tax amounting to Rs 750 million, pending since 2014-15. Reacting to this, DMCs dumped tonnes of garbage in front of the FBR office located at Gulistan-e-Johar. According to FBR sources, the Regional Tax Office (RTO)-III had taken up the issue in December 2015 and asked the DMCs to explain why they failed to collect 6 percent income tax on payments to contractors. However, none of the DMCs gave any response to the RTO-III, despite several reminders.
Consequently, the tax department raised a tax demand of Rs 950 million against all six DMCs and issued an order under section 161 of Income Tax Ordinance 2001 on March 22, 2016. Replying to a question, sources said although the order was appealable within 30 days, no DMCs bothered to take it seriously that led to the recovery of Rs 750 million through accounts' attachment.
They further said that DMCs instead of clearing rest of the pending withholding tax resorted to negative tactics and pressurising the tax officials; adding that DMCs have dumped tonnes of garbage before the tax department. Reacting to this, the tax department moved an application in Shahrae Faisal police station to lodge FIR against DMCs; sources said and added that if they did not register the case they would lodge FIR against them under section 196 of the Income Tax Ordinance 2001.
They said the tax department was also planning to select open cases against DMCs for audit for last five years besides initiating scrutiny of their records under Special Procedure Rule 2007 for sales tax. They hoped to generate the tax demand of around Rs 10 billion against them through the aforesaid exercise and added that the tax department had also detected Rs 4.5 billion discrepancies in the road construction project for Madooh Goth, which would also be forwarded to the NAB, Sindh for further investigation.
Meanwhile, officials in DMCs, who did not want to be named said the tax department had taken the said action at a time when the salaries of DMC workers were about to be released. Hence, the aggression is justified.
They said that FBR had charged income tax on the funds, which were tax-exempted and termed the said move from FBR as unwanted action. They also urged the authorities concerned to look into the matter seriously because if the FBR did not return the amount immediately the whole waste management work would be suspended.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2016

Comments

Comments are closed.