The Federal Board of Revenue has started issuing notices to defaulters including registered firms, business units and corporate entities to recover income tax arrears pending for years. Sources told Business Recorder on Friday the Board has directed all the tax offices to prepare the lists of tax defaulters.
Responding to this, the Regional Tax Office (RTO) Karachi has raised the arrears demand of Rs 436 million from the tax defaulters, sources said and added that the department has categorised the defaulters into three groups in accordance with their outstanding taxes to expedite the recovery process. They said that FBR has communicated an "Arrears Recovery Plan 2009-10" to all the tax offices for the recovery of outstanding income tax amounting to billions of rupees.
Moreover, they said this was for the first time that the recovery plan has been drafted to deal with arrears-related issues for improving performance of departmental representatives and monitoring of concerned officials. They said the Board has given free hand to the Chief Commissioners of Inland Revenue in the selection of big overdue tax cases for recovery purposes and added that the FBR has also directed the tax offices to deal with these cases efficiently.
They said Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (Pral) has been tasked to develop a comprehensive 'Arrears Monitoring System' in line with international standards to improve overall revenue collection in the second half of 2009-10. They said the system would facilitate the tax offices in creating arrears demands besides indicating various recovery proceedings initiated up to the level of attachment/sale, appointment of receiver, arrest/detention of defaulter or writing off of the amount by the competent authority.