ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has decided to upload 3.5 million National Database and Registration Authority’s profiles of non-filers without any addition/amendment or revision on the new portal.
Sources told Business Recorder here on Thursday that during initial testing of data, there were errors in the first 100 cases, but the system has now been improved. There were deficiencies in the initial sampling of data, which has been removed.
In the past, the FBR had provided third-party data of 14 million people to the Nadra. The authority has mixed its own data with the FBR’s third-party records and finally developed profiles of non-filers. The Nadra has identified 3.5 million non-filers through applying three different methodologies using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The FBR will receive the profiles of the non-filers from the Nadra for subsequent uploading on the portal.
The FBR will upload the profiles on a new portal to be launched for the general public. “The portal is expected to be launched after the end of the political uncertainty,” an official said on the condition of anonymity.
FBR website temporarily shut down
However, the FBR will not make any changes or amendments to the profiles finalised by the Nadra. The profiles would be available on the new portal without any alteration. The FBR will not add anything in the profiles developed by the Nadra.
The FBR will give time period up to June 2022 to the non-filers to respond to the profiles available on the new portal. The FBR will also launch a massive media campaign in this regard. The non-filers would be allowed to file returns free of cost and the FBR will pay Rs5,000 to the tax lawyers for filing of each income tax return of non-filers.
Non-filers can come forward and clear their position after analysing their data on the FBR’s web portal. The non-compliant non-filers would face consequences of disabling of their mobile phones or disconnections of their electricity and gas connections, etc.
According to the sources, both the Nadra and the FBR cannot deal with the “inherent errors” in the third-party data. For instance, there are cases of electricity and gas connections in the name of original owners for the past many years. However, these electricity and gas connections are used by some other individuals. The billing data would reflect names of the original owners of the utilities.
Similarly, the vehicles’ third-party data would continue to show original owners of vehicles even in cases where the vehicles have been sold but not been transferred to the new owners. If CNIC of an employee has been used to buy multiple vehicles on the behalf of the original investor, the data would reflect poor employer has owner of all those vehicles.
Moreover, the data of international travelers available with the immigration department might be incomplete which may only specify information of tickets from Pakistan to a transit country and not the final destination.
Therefore, various kinds of “inherent errors” in the third-party data cannot be resolved, they added.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022