The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) has expressed concern over the non-issuance of income tax refund in certain salaried and corporate cases and asked the regional commissioners of income tax (RCITs) to give reasons for not complying with the CBR instructions.
Sources said here on Tuesday that the Board-in-Council took up the issue of pending cases of income tax refund pertaining to salary and corporate cases and directed Member Income Tax to obtain details of pending corporate refund from the RCITs along with the reasons of backlog.
The Board-in-Council also directed the Member Direct Taxes and Member Co-ordination to review the existing refund rules for salaried people.
It was also decided that the Income Tax Department would conduct desk audit of people who claimed refund under the Universal Self-Assessment Scheme (USAS).
Under the procedure, the CBR has directed the department to finalise a list of refund claims from the returns of income, which should be subjected to desk audit under USAS. The claims could then be accepted or rejected on the basis of desk audits.
The CBR has directed the Member Sales Tax to start a new exercise to estimate the refund in 2004-05 and devise a strategy to considerably reduce the total volume of refund through policy measures.
The Board-in-Council examined a proposal that the public listed companies, multinational companies and government departments/corporations should be allowed to refund the amount of advance tax collected along with the motor vehicle tax and telephone bills.
The CBR authorities have agreed to provide taxpayer's data available with the Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL) to the collectorates and commissioners for analysing trends in revenue collection in different sectors.
The Board-in-Council has expressed serious concern over inaccurate reporting of tax collection by the field formation in the monthly performance report (MPR), the sources said.
It observed that the reporting of tax collection was not accurate, particularly in the income tax monthly performance report. It was decided that the director general inspection (Direct Taxes) should carryout an exercise to verify the accuracy of monthly performance reports and pinpoint the reasons for error and inaccuracies in consultation with the Member Fiscal Research and Statistics (FRS).
The Member FRS would review the "MPR form" to improve the revenue reporting system by the field formation.
The Board has also decided to launch a media campaign in July 2004. The issues to be highlighted in the media campaign include concessions given under customs and sales tax laws, particularly those benefiting agriculture, investment and overseas Pakistanis. The Board-in-Council, in principle, approved the media policy with improvement in certain areas.
Under the restructuring of Fiscal, Research and Statistics, the Member FRS gave a presentation on the proposed future structure of the organisation. The Council approved hiring of two research people on contract.
It directed the Member Customs to carry out an exercise to assess the impact of reduction in duty on rebate.
All the members would submit reports to the Member Co-ordination regarding compliance of the directives issued by the CBR chairman.
The CBR will also devise a Management Information System (MIS) according to the accurately reviewed performance of each CBR department on regular basis.