FBR acts against leakage of secret information

The Federal Board of Revenue has issued a stern warning to the tax officials saying that ''internal sources'' are leaking secret information to the print media, adding that action would be taken against those found involved in leakage of FBR correspondences, orders, notes and minutes of meetings to the reporters of national dailies.
In this regard, the FBR has issued a circular to the Board officials here on Wednesday. This is for the first time that the FBR has issued such instructions barring the tax officials from sharing information of public interest, legal interpretations, correspondences, orders and notes to the print media.
The FBR has decided to take strict action against the ''internal sources'' providing information to the correspondents of print media. According to the circular (leakage of secret information) issued here on Wednesday, the competent authority has taken serious notice of the news items appearing in various National Dailies recently which contained details of the internal correspondence/ notes/ orders/ meetings of FBR.
It clearly indicates that the information has been leaked out by some "Internal Source". It goes with out saying that reporting official business to the press without authorisation is highly inappropriate and against the government instructions. Officers/ officials are, therefore, advised to adhere to the government instructions and any lapse in this regard will be viewed seriously. This issue with the approval of competent authority, FBR circular added.
When contacted, a tax expert said that the FBR has failed to place the Customs Valuation Rulings on its website. The FBR has made a valuation gateway at its website, but no Customs Valuation Rulings has been seen which are very important for the importers and investors. At the same time, the FBR has also not placed important instructions issued to the Large Taxpayer Units (LTUs) and Regional Tax Offices relating to the interpretation of tax laws and important legal issues involving taxation matters.
The FBR directives and instructions on different legal issues have been communicated to the field formations on daily basis, but never placed on the website. The business community is not aware of the day to day changes taking place in tax laws due to non-availability of FBR instructions and directives to the business and trade.
The FBR instructions, which involves interpretation of tax rates and laws are very important for the business as well as general public. However, no FBR instructions to the LTUs/RTOs involving serious taxation matters have been placed on the website. The issuance of such kind of FBR instructions (leakage of secret information) would only stop the communication of important information pertaining to taxes to the general public.
The FBR has never placed Special Exemption Orders of Sales Tax, Federal Excise Duty and Customs Duty etc on its website due to unknown reasons. Commenting on the FBR instructions, another tax expert said that the FBR has declared publication of instructions/correspondences and FBR orders as also leakage of secret information, which is not clear. How the publication of FBR routine orders could be declared as leakage of secret information?
They raised a question. Secondly, if an important taxation issue directly relating to the imposition of tax has been communicated to the LTUs/RTOs through a Clarification, how publication of such clarification is a crime and leakage of secret information? A tax expert said. Interestingly, the FBR introduced an electronic system of E-DOX at its headquarters for ending the manual maintenance of files and letters. In the presence of E-DOX, the FBR is still maintaining all kinds of files and letters manually. The E-DOX has been working for the last few years, but manual maintenance of files is going on at the level of the FBR.
Analysts say that ours is not Indian board of revenue where talk of secrecy and information leakage is important. It is Pakistani revenue board, which should take into confidence all the stakeholders and share with them all the information freely, which has direct bearing on the tax matters.
In the past, the FBR used to release monthly figures of revenue collection to the media including chart of revenue collection. However, the revenue collection of FBR for the month of April 2011 has not been officially released by the Board. The exercise of releasing revenue collection figures has been discontinued. The FBR has placed revenue collection position of July-March 2010-11 on its website, but no figures of revenue collection of April 2011 have been made available on the FBR website.
It is important to mention that the FBR has already imposed a strict ban on the entry of journalists due to budget exercise for the last few weeks. The ban on the entry of reporters into the FBR Headquarters would continue till announcement of the budget. The electronic barrier at the entry of the FBR has already barred the reporters from entering into the FBR headquarters.