The President has rejected the Federal Board of Revenue's (FBR) representation against an order passed by Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) on the issue of theft of taxpayers' confidential data, which will now be investigated by Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), involving tax/PRAL officers, who illegally accessed confidential data of taxpayers' assessment record.
Sources told Business Recorder that the President while rejecting the representation filed by FBR has confirmed the order passed by FTO wherein a landmark case of unique nature was decided by the FTO Abdur Rauf Chaudhry. Resultantly, the case of data theft will be investigated by Cyber Crimes Wing of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and FBR involving tax officers, who illegally accessed confidential data of taxpayers' assessment record.
President while rejecting the order stated "This representation has been filed by Agency. However, recommendations as such do not appear to be cause of any grievance to Agency rather direction had been issued in the matter of safeguarding integrity and confidentiality of tax record in accordance with provisions of Income Tax Ordinance, 2001. No grounds stand made out for interference with findings and recommendations of F.T.O. Accordingly, the President has been pleased to reject the above referred representation. Compliance now to be reported to F.T.O's Secretariat within 30 days of receipt of copy of this order.
It is learnt that the case disclosed a strange phenomenon of data theft involving some FBR/tax officers, who illegally accessed returns of income and wealth statements of manually filed as well as the electronic assessment record. This is a complaint against alleged theft of confidential data from a taxpayer's assessment record filed by RTO Multan taxpayer Sohail Amin of Gaggoo Mandi Burewala. The modus operandi adopted by the officers was to first access the confidential record of registered persons from electronic system and later use the same for filing of complaints against registered persons with evidence of stolen assessment record.
Taking serious notice of the situation, FTO, Abdur Rauf Chaudhry has directed the FBR to conduct enquiry to determine how and why complainant's assessment record was accessed by a number of FBR officials when they were not charged with conducting any enquiry involving him in any manner nor were they involved in the assessment of his income for any tax period. The FBR should devise a foolproof SOP in consultation with the National Response Centre for Cyber Crimes (NR3C) wing of FIA to protect the confidential data of taxpayers. The FBR should also enforce strict confidentiality of passwords assigned to field officers for purposes of accessing taxpayer's electronic record.
A copy of the said findings/recommendations, along with copy of complaint filed the Human Rights Cell of the Supreme Court of Pakistan be forwarded to the NR3C wing of FIA for initiating criminal investigation into the matter, as per law, the FTO added.
According to the findings of the FTO, the leakage of sensitive information from the complainant's assessment record is evident from the fact that in the complaint filed before the Human Rights Cell of the Supreme Court, direct reference has been made to information borne on the Complainant's income tax returns and wealth statements. This shows that the Dept has not been able to ensure the integrity of complainant's assessment record and this lapse is tantamount to maladministration as defined in Section 2(3) of the FTO Ordinance. The illegal access to complainant's assessment record also constitutes data theft under Section 216 of the Income Tax Ordinance 2001, FTO added.
The FTO said that the ambient circumstances suggest that documents including returns of income and wealth statements were illegally obtained by accessing the Complainant's manually filed record as well as the electronic assessment record. The Complainant has pointed out that in the complaint filed before the Human Rights Cell of the Supreme Court of Pakistan Abu Bakar had statedly annexed Amin's tax returns for 2009, 2010 and 2011 and wealth statements. This shows Amin's confidential assessment record, manual as well as electronic, was illegally accessed as this information was not available anywhere else.