In a classic case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) is reported to have just discovered that a large number of non-duty paid cars are being registered and regularised by the provincial excise departments. A report in this paper has it that the CBR has obtained data from the provincial excise department in Rawalpindi as well as other cities, which shows that they have been registering non-duty paid vehicles.
What is particularly striking about this story is that the malpractice is not restricted to one place but is widespread. Therefore, it does not look like a case of a few individuals acting in violation of the existing rules and regulations on their own.
If all the provincial excise departments have been doing the same thing, it is reasonable to assume that they have received the needed nod and the wink from some influential quarters. The issue calls for investigation as to which these quarters might be.
It is an open secret that for years now some people related to the high and mighty of the land have been involved in the smuggling of vehicles into Balochistan and the NWFP. From time to time, they have also been successful in pressuring the government in Peshawar into announcing amnesty schemes to legalise their illegal activities.
As our report on the issue points out, in the recent years, the NWFP government has implemented as many as three schemes for the regularisation of smuggled vehicles: one on April 11, 1998, the second on June 12, 1999, and the third on December 16, 1999.
These back to back amnesty schemes have encouraged the criminal elements to go on bringing in more and more smuggled cars without the payment of tax, in the hope that these too would soon be regularised. As a matter of fact, the Prime Minister's Secretariat and the NWFP Governor have been sending their respective proposals to the CBR, asking it to announce yet another amnesty for the regularisation of smuggled vehicles in FATA.
Creditably for it, this time the CBR has managed to stand its ground, refusing to accept these proposals.
Such proposals make a mockery of the law and the principle of equity, especially when they are implemented at regular intervals, as has been the case in the NWFP.
Besides, they deprive the government of substantial amounts of revenue. In fact, IMF is reported to have raised strong objections to the government granting the previous three amnesties to car smugglers, pointing out that such whitener schemes disrupt a sound tax policy.
There is no justification whatsoever for anyone in the Prime Minister's Secretariat or the Governor's House in Peshawar to ask for the waiving off of an important tax. This scandal must come to an end.
The CBR is to start a drive from the next month on, with the help of the Directorate General of Intelligence and Investigation, Customs and Excise, to confiscate all non-duty paid vehicles on the basis of registration numbers allocated to them.
Once the drive is complete, the owners of the impounded vehicles may be given the choice of having their property released on the payment of all outstanding dues, failing which these vehicles should be auctioned off and the money deposited in the customs department's account. One only hopes the CBR will not allow itself to be stopped from doing the right thing this time.