FTO says 90pc of his decisions accepted by complainants, FBR

LAHORE: Federal Tax Ombudsman Dr Asif Mahmood Jah said on Monday that about 90 percent of the decisions announced by him have been accepted by both the complainants as well as by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).

Talking to Business Recorder, he said, he has recently presented the annual report of his office for the year 2021 to President Arif Alvi. The president has appreciated the efforts made by his office in dispensing justice to the taxpayers, he added.

He said his office had disposed of 2,867 complaints out of a total of 3,371 in 2021. It is encouraging to state that out of these 2,867 complaints, 2,556 (80.15%) were accepted by the complainants and the FBR, he said, adding that only in 311 cases (10.85%) either review or representation was preferred by the complainant or the Board.

Similarly, he said, 88.15% of his recommendations had been implemented during 2021. Dr Jah said his office has made recommendations for processing the refund cases to the tune of Rs8499.11 million and the same were sanctioned by the Board in 2021. He pointed out that the disposal time of complaints was reduced to 57.29 days in 2021 from 68.43 days in 2020.

“I had also undertaken 217 Own Motion investigations in 2021 (against 18 in 2020) and conducted 74 outreach and awareness as compared to 50 such sessions in 2020”, he added.

He said his office has also launched mobile phone application, FTO portal, digital SMS, FTO YouTube channel, four additional regional offices at Abbotabad, Sargodha, Sukkur, and Sialkot to enhance the outreach of the organization to provide justice to taxpayers of those areas against maladministration of respective tax authorities.

He said his office has also safeguarded the public exchequer by detecting illegal refund claims through own motion investigations as well as inspection of the offices of FBR. In a recent case, he said, he had proposed strict disciplinary/criminal action against senior officers of the Board for their involvement in issuance of illegal refund amounting to Rs 123.4 million to a foreign company. He said his office was also carrying out a study through PIDE on the merger of Alternate Dispute Resolution Committees (ADRCs) with his office to expedite resolution of complaints of taxpayers in future.

He said he has also ordered an immediate crackdown against illegal luxury cars and instructed the authorities to impound smuggled and Non-Custom Paid (NCP) luxury vehicles or those with fake registration carrying documents illegal high-end cars and SUVs with an engine displacement of over 2000cc.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022