Probe into burdening taxpayers: FBR fails to timely submit comments before FTO

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has failed to timely submit comments before the Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO), who is investigating the FBR for burdening taxpayers with heavy cost for online integration of their businesses through a private limited company.

The FTO is also investigating the FBR for violation of privacy under section 216 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 and burdening the taxpayers with heavy cost in forcefully implementation of SRO.428 for online integration of businesses and configure retail outlets with FBR’s e-computerized system.

It is reliably learnt that the office of the FTO had registered complaint against the FBR and issued notice to Chairman FBR and CCIR to submit comments on or before 16.10.2024 on the allegations contained in the complaints but FBR has not filed any comments despite service of legal notices issued under FTO Ordinance, 2000.

When contacted, tax lawyer Waheed Shahzad Butt informed earlier on the similar issue Peshawar High Court has frozen the salary of FBR Chairman for not submitting reply to repeated reminders in a pending tax case. The PHC had issued instructions to the Accountant General of Pakistan (AGP) to implement the court order.

Waheed was of the view that taxpayers expected the enforcement of law and Constitutional rights and exercised the powers conferred on FBR by the Legislature honestly in the interest of Pakistan. However, some tax officials are involved in violation of constitutional rights of the taxpayers for claiming huge rewards out of precious taxpayer’s money but they do not care to obey the orders of courts/tax ombudsman. Tax officials misusing the law must be removed from the services in the process of re-structuring/overhauling of FBR as ordered by the Apex authority Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), he accused.

To avoid heavy cost of litigation and wastage of precious time/resources, kindly issue recommendations to the FBR to provide complete documentation, SOP(s), Flow Chart of Fiscal/tax information provided to private company selected by FBR, breach of personal privacy under the law (Section 216), exorbitant charges, similar practices in neighbouring and other countries, lawful mandate to nominate one private company across Pakistan for point of sales (POS) activities, and other ancillary documents/data. The FBR should initiate proceedings under Section 198 of the ITO, 2001 against tax employees responsible for this biased, one sided forceful implementation of a good law through a private limited company at exorbitant cost, in the light of the apex court judgments PLD 2021 SC 1 and PLD 2022 SC 119, the complainant added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024