FBR Stakeholders Perception Survey: dealing of officers with taxpayers greatly improved

A tax survey of business community conducted by an international company for the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has opined that dealing with the tax system is easier at present against the past practice. Sources told Business Recorder here on Wednesday that the "Stakeholders Perception Survey" of the FBR has given an assessment on the improvement in dealing of tax officers with the taxpayers.
As per final report of the survey, the trends observed in the overall tax reforms reveal that the awareness of reform program is high for large taxpayers, legal experts, tax authorities and trade bodies. Focusing on the aspect of whether the FBR supports taxpayers who want to do the right things, the trend indicates that majority is in agreement. A majority of stakeholders identified that it is easier now to deal with the tax system than in the past, as majority of them either 'Agreed' or 'Strongly Agreed'. There are more positive responses concerning understanding about functions of FBR and awareness of certain rights related to the tax system. However, the awareness of reform program appears to be low among the other categories of stakeholders.
According to the satisfaction levels of all stakeholders, the overall automation initiatives of FBR are regarded as being moderately satisfactory. Large taxpayers and Tax Authority Officials have found the automation initiatives to be between moderate and high. The website has been rated higher than other automation initiatives. In terms of the satisfaction levels with the Tax Payer's Facilitation Centres, the stakeholders are moderately satisfied with the services of TFCs.
Considering each aspect with reference to the perceptions about Alternate Dispute Resolution Committee (ADRC), previous findings reveal positive trends mostly except awareness of ADRC where an overwhelming majority does not have awareness about the system. Current trends are similar, particularly around the areas of speedier disposal of cases, objectively of recommendations by ADRC and the reduction of workload as a result of ADRC. However, there is a slight improvement in the awareness of ADRC since the last survey particularly amongst the trade bodies (from 10% to 26%) and large taxpayers (from 24% to 33%), survey said.
Background of the "Stakeholders Perception Survey" revealed that in order to monitor the Tax Administration Reform Program, stakeholders' perception periodic survey was the integral part of the reform initiatives. The first round of a country wide stakeholders' perception survey was conducted in the year 2007. As per requirement of the project the second round of country wide periodic perception survey needed to be conducted to get feedback from the stakeholder on the quality of service provided by FBR to the taxpayers and also input on FBR integrity and highlights changes in the tax system.
The FBR had inked a contract with a company for 2nd round of perception survey to determine FBR's achievement of the objectives set forward by Tax Administration Reform Program (TARP) after the first round of survey in 2007. To get a fresh assessment of the stakeholders, the company carried out a nationally representative, survey of the stakeholders to determine the degree of improvements between the two surveys and develop further recommendations for FBR to improve in areas of concern.
To ensure a holistic understanding of the taxpayers' perception relating to the quality of services provided by FBR and integrity of employees, a quantitative method of data collection was employed. This approach of gathering 360 degree feedback from all stakeholders enabled the research team to complement the data of this study with a comprehensive analysis.
The survey results revealed that the Large Taxpayers Units (LTUs) are considered very important by tax authorities and big taxpayers; FBR's initiative for LTUs has provided facilities to Large Taxpayers with most desired environment of very high administrative and technical controls, skills and technology use. Stakeholders are very positive about the objectives of Tax Administration Reform Project (TARP) for facilitating the Large Taxpayers and almost all the aspects of LTUs including tax collection, tax audit, legal prosecution, registration and information technology as providing satisfactorily services to its stakeholders. The most significant change as compared to the previous survey has been noticed in the area of the availability and use of third party information as a support for tax audit by the LTUs, where the high level of satisfaction of Tax Authority has almost doubled from 15% to 32%. There is also a positive change in the perception of the tax authority on the subject of compilation of the list of defaulters, showing an increase in the satisfaction level from 30% in 2007 to 46% in the current study. Also, with reference to the Information Technology related matters, it was noticed that the satisfaction level of the Tax Authority on the subject of data matching and document sorting has almost doubled to 41% from 18% in 2007, survey report added.