The new audit policy of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has committed to unearthing tax evasion and avoidance schemes for creating an effective deterrence against tax evasion. The FBR has issued aims and objectives of the Audit Policy 2015 here on Saturday.
The new policy would promote voluntary compliance of the taxpayers with the tax laws. It seeks to achieve this by reminding taxpayers of the risks of non-compliance and by engendering a degree of certainty in the broader community that serious abuses of the tax law will be detected and appropriately penalized. It would make the process of selection non-discriminatory and transparent by selection of cases of persons or class of persons for audit through computer ballots.
It would also identify and plug tax avoidance loop holes through effective tax audits. It would identify areas of tax laws that require clarification. Audits bring to light areas of tax law that may cause confusion and problems to a large number of taxpayers and thus prompting FBR to clarify the laws' requirements and to better educate the taxpayers.
The new policy would bring to light information on evasion and avoidance schemes that would be used to mount major counter abuse projects. It would develop institutional framework and time frames for selection, processing and disposal of audit cases.
The new policy would identify non compliant taxpayers through developing a modern compliance and risk management system based on risk identification, analysis of risk characteristics and prioritization in order of importance. It would also identify taxpayers most likely to be non compliant through risk scoring techniques. It would also develop indicators for determining causal relationship between compliance and taxpayers' characteristics, new audit policy added.