The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) will empower the general sales tax (GST) payers to monitor processing of their returns, tax liability, status of refund, reasons of delay and other GST related issues through a web-based online facility.
Sources told Business Recorder on Tuesday that, for the first time, the CBR has decided to conduct computerised risk-based evaluation of sales tax to facilitate the public sector.
An intelligence system would also be put in place, countrywide, within the next 15 days to provide service to all registered taxpayers, as well as tax collectors. Registered units would have direct access to all sales tax-related information to check the status of their transactions.
Under the new system, registered units would be able to check processing of sales tax returns at the level of Collectorates of Sales Tax based on the declarations made by the taxpayers.
Another unique feature of the system will be to provide online reasons for delayed payment of sales tax refund. Without going to the collectorate, the objections for non-payment of refund would be communicated to the taxpayer through this system.
The unit would be able to analyse tax liability calculated by sales tax officials. For example, exporters of Karachi, Faisalabad and Lahore would have 24-hours online access to their returns and refund status. Similarly, information about the tax paid by the unit would also be available on the system.
Through this system, the taxpayers would also be able to know about the status of their case in adjudication process, sources said. They said that the system has extracted information from all available sources, including refund repository system, sales tax returns database, Centralised Registration Office (CRO), utility department data and other third-party data.
Collectors of sales tax would be able to identify compliant and non-compliant sectors through this system. The system would put compliant sectors into the fast track category for speedy processing of returns/refunds etc, but the non-compliant sectors would be blocked for verification purposes.
Collectors would have online access to the taxpayer's information for critical evaluation of the sales tax returns and analysis/trends in a particular sector. The Business Project Management Team (PMT) of Sales Tax has developed this system, which would integrate data and analyse the system on real time basis.
Some salient features of the new system include sectoral analysis on increase/decrease in tax, increase/decrease in taxable sale, increase/decrease in input-output ratio and growth in different sectors. Collectorates would also be empowered to change, suspend or discontinue, any aspect of the website at any time, including the price and availability of any product, website feature, database, or content.