As previous Surveys have declared the tax machinery corrupt and inefficient, the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) will shortly launch a 'perception survey' in collaboration with Gallop Pakistan to obtain the viewpoint of taxpayers and government departments about the integrity of CBR employees.
According to a CBR report issued on Saturday, a survey was conducted in 1999 to obtain the taxpayers' opinion on the country's taxation system. The questionnaire was mailed to 128,000 taxpayers, tax advisors/accountants, randomly selected from the CBR database. Of this, 126,000 letters were sent to taxpayers with varying tax payments and 2000 to tax advisors/accountants.
Surprisingly, only 6000 taxpayers responded highlighting that taxation system fell short of their expectations. The survey results showed that laws were complicated; rules and regulations were stringent; the staff (tax machinery) was inefficient and corrupt; and the tax administration was non-responsive to dynamics of fiscal and commercial environment. Level of courtesy was low and connivance between the taxpayers and the tax collectors was high.
The report pointed out that another survey was conducted by the Task Force on Tax Administration. The results showed that all respondents including taxpayers, tax collectors, and representatives of civil society were equally worried about corruption.
The respondents believed that corruption was not simply restricted to CBR alone, rather many other government departments were also engaged in such unhealthy practices.
In fact, when they were asked to rank government departments according to the perceived level of corruption, many of these departments were ranked higher than CBR. The problem of 'speed money' in the case of customs clearance, and seeking refund payments was also calculated and highlighted in the report.
Now a new survey would be conducted to update the tax officials about the level of taxpayers' facilitation, change in attitude of tax officials and improving the overall fiscal environment.
The report stated that different categories of stakeholders are identified including income and corporate taxpayers, salaried individuals; non-salaried cases, wholesale/retail traders, exporters, turnover Taxpayers, manufacturers, service providers and importers. Other stakeholders included CBR employees, employees of other government agencies with specific interests in CBR activities, courts and prosecutors and officials of the Ministry of Finance.
Coverage and Sample Selection: In view of the high cost and time involved in recording responses from the entire population of the identified stakeholders, selection of a representative sample is the preferred option. Careful selection of the sample will ensure the validity of the findings of any research.
Thus, a representative sample, both in terms of type of respondents and regional spread will be drawn. In certain cases 'biases' might have to be introduced in sample selection to capture marginalised groups, the report added.
Comments
Comments are closed.