ISLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue Chairman Salman Siddique on Monday said that the FBR had decided to launch a "Centralized Audit System" from July 1 to improve audit system and efforts would be made to bridge the tax gap by bringing the defaulters under the net.
He was addressing a post-budget press conference here at FBR House with Additional Secretary Revenues Asrar Rauf, Spokesperson of FBR Riffat Shaheen and other senior officials.
The chairman said improvement in audit system and auditing of withholding agents like banks would help collect more revenues.
He hoped that the FBR would be able to meet the target of Rs1,588 billion set for the outgoing financial year.
He further said that the measures were taken by the FBR to bring more people under the tax net, 700,000 tax evaders identified by the Bureau and administrative steps would help meet the next year's revenue target of Rs1,952 billion.
"We have full support of the top leadership of country, including the president and the prime minister for broadening the tax base and bringing tax evaders and non-tax payers under the net", he said.
Siddique said that there was about 40 to 50 percent gap between revenue collections and tax potential and efforts would be made to bridge this gap to contain the fiscal deficit of the country.
He said it was recognized by everyone that FBR role is critical in the economic development of the country.
He expressed his resolve that the tax collectors of his organization would be made the real agents of the nation building asking them to do more efforts for the collection of more taxes to enhance revenues for the country's prosperity.
He said that he identified the 700,000 tax evaders or their affiliations or status and it is his job to bring them under the tax net and recover the evaded or defaulted amount of the taxes due from them.
"No outsider will come to improve system in the organization but we have talent to do it by ourselves", he remarked.
He said that through audit of withholding agents like banks, FBR has collected Rs25 billion from the audit of banks only.
The chairman FBR said that Rs9 billion was collected from Karachi only while Rs160 million was collected from the audit of the banks in Rawalpindi alone.
The chairman FBR said that the new Pak Afghan Transit Trade (PATT) agreement would be effective from June 12 this year adding the Afghanistan would be bound to provide Financial Guarantee in Pak rupees for exports of good from Pakistan to Afghanistan.
He hoped that this would benefit Pakistan in terms of customs revenues.
Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011
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