Broadening of Tax Base (BTB) unit, Karachi of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has issued notices to 250,000 power and gas consumers in the city. Talking to Business Recorder, Badruddin Qureshi chief commissioner, Regional Tax Office (RTO)-II, Karachi and head of BTB unit, Karachi said that the department had obtained data of commercial and industrial consumers from K-Electric and Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) and found 0.6 million unregistered persons in KE and around 8,000 unregistered consumers in SSGC. Furthermore, he said that after sifting all data and removing multiple entries, the department had issued notices under section 176 of Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 to 250,000 industrial and commercial power and gas connection holders against their billings for the month of July 2019. He said that around 6,000 notices were issued to unregistered gas consumers while rest of the notices was released on the basis of KE data.
Moreover, Chief Commissioner RTO-II said that FBR through its centralized system also issued notices under section 114 of the Ordinance to 10,000 unregistered individuals on the basis of their bank, auto and property details.
He also informed that BTB unit received 98,000 additional returns as compared to last fiscal year after acquiring services of volunteers to facilitate non-filers at their work places including financial institutions and other corporate entities in submission of income tax returns for tax year 2018.
Badruddin further apprised that the tax department had kicked off anti smuggling drive from September 1, 2019 and visited 15 shops of city's one of the posh shopping malls so far where it had been found that all shopkeepers were running their businesses without sales tax registration number (STRN).
Replying to a question, he said that FBR had restricted its field formation to extend the scope of its anti smuggling drive to the retailers as the board was going to announce separate tax scheme for small traders in coming days.
Furthermore, he said that tax department had collected Rs 9 billion in August 2019, depicting 45 percent growth as compared to Rs 6.5 billion collection made during last corresponding month.
He said that the BTB, unit during scrutiny of information obtained from different sources identified thousands of unregistered individuals and business entities including 6500 doctors, 6300 schools and tuition centers, 228 garments and boutiques, 486 restaurants, etc and the notices in this regard would be issued in bulk through FBR centralized tax system.
Later, Dr. Abdul Lateef Mian commissioner RTO-II said that tax department had now formally requested FBR to get go-ahead from Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) for acquiring personal details of the users of cellular companies for broadening of tax base.
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