FBR selects thousands of cases for audit through electronic balloting

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Thursday selected thousands of cases for parametric audit through computerized balloting held at FBR headquarters under the supervision of Advisor to Prime Minister on Revenue and Federal Minister, Haroon Akhtar Khan.

The audit of selected cases of Income Tax would be conducted for the tax year 2016 while that of Sales Tax and Federal Excise Duty would be for tax period from July 2015 to June 2016.

Various cases from income tax, sales tax of corporate and non-corporate sectors, Federal Excise Duty (FED) on corporate and non-corporate sectors were selected for audit through this computerized balloting.

“A company or individual selected for an audit would not be subjected to this exercise for next two consecutive years as the audit would be done once in three years,” Haroon clarified while speaking on the occasion.

He said that a person having cent percent salaried income (from public or private sector) would not be subjected to the audit, however clarified that if a salaried person was having other sources of income like business, this income would be considered for audit in accordance with FBR procedures.

As per the balloting 1174 cases have been identified for audit from Sales Tax of Corporate Sector, 7532 from Sales Tax non-corporate sector, 28 from FED of corporate and 20 from FED on non-corporate sector while thousands of cases have been selected from income tax groups.

Talking about the tax amnesty scheme, the minister said that the government was clear about this scheme as it had been launched for the benefit of the country and was imperative at this crucial time.

He said that this time the country was in need of bringing back money from abroad to overcome the current account deficit issues.

He requested every citizen of Pakistan to think about the country’s interest and help make the amnesty scheme successful.

He said that other counties including United States, Malaysia, Turkey and India have launched such schemes to benefit the country, so if Pakistan launches it for national interest, it should be supported.

He also urged the potential taxpayers to start paying taxes, as the government had introduced offshore, onshore schemes and many other initiatives to facilitate taxpayers.

“We have to build this country,” he said adding that the incumbent government had delivered whatever it had said, and even did beyond that.

Among others, Director Instituted of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan, Sohail Malik, President Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Ghazanfar Bilour, President Pakistan Tax Bar Association, Abdul Qadir and senior officials of the FBR were present on the occasion.

Earlier this week, the board had approved Audit Policy for 2017 pertaining to Tax Year 2016, defining that the criteria for selection of cases (for all taxes) for TY 2016 would be parametric.