Income tax data entry exercise completed in Islamabad

Central Board of Revenue (CBR) Chairman Riaz Ahmed Malik has said that the exercise of income tax data entry in Islamabad has been completed in time with 100 percent accuracy, leaving little room for income tax officials to harass or blackmail taxpayers.
Moreover, he said, the experiment of having data processing centres (DPCs) at all regional offices failed miserably.
Riaz told Business Recorder that the data of over 60 percent income tax returns has been sent back to field formations after capturing information from over 1.15 million returns at Income Tax Data Entry Centre in Islamabad. Not a single return has been misplaced during the whole process, he added.
The CBR chairman said that this is for the first time in the history of Pakistan that five months have lapsed after filing of income tax returns, but none of the taxpayers or associations/trade bodies made hue and cry as centralised data entry exercise in Islamabad has made it impossible for the field formation to issue illegal income tax notices to the taxpayers.
At Present, the CBR is fully capable of analysing data of selected taxpayers through parametric selection of cases for audit under the Universal Self-Assessment Scheme (USAS).
The CBR will be in a better position to analyse that how many taxpayers have left the important columns of the form and how many have submitted complete forms. The accuracy of the data is visible from the fact that the CBR could identify even a single column left unfilled by any taxpayer.
He said that certain quarters having vested interests were allegedly working against reform process, but in time data entry has removed all the apprehensions.
The CBR has successfully achieved the desired results of obtaining necessary information pertaining to taxpayers through this silent survey without causing any inconvenience.
In the past, as soon as the returns were filed by the taxpayers, the field formation started issuance of notices and money markers in the name of tax consultants used to blackmail taxpayers.
Riaz said, "You tell me why even a single complaint has yet not been lodged against the income tax assessing officers regarding issuance of illegal notices. The data entry is being carried out in Islamabad, which leaves no room for the assessing officers to misuse the information.
The centralisation of income tax data has saved millions of taxpayers from the clutches of income tax officers.
The silence of the business community itself speaks of the accuracy of ongoing exercise".
Terming data entry exercise as a big leap forward in implementing reforms, the CBR chairman said that every year field formations were giving wrong information to the tax authorities that data processing centres (DPCs) were compiling tax data. Contrary to this, when we checked the data of the DPCs, it was otherwise.
The situation was so grim that even the taxpayers return were misplaced during movement from first floor of the DPC to the third floor of the same building.
Riaz said that centralised data entry centre in Islamabad has the ability to analyse information with minimum involvement of tax officers, which leaves no room for the assessing officers to dispatch notices on their own.
Giving credit to the new system, the CBR chairman was optimistic that the centralised system of data entry of tax returns has successfully removed over 95 percent chances of malpractice.
Similarly, the system would eventually remove the involvement of the so-called tax practitioners, who used to act as a middleman between the taxpayers and the tax officers.
He said the CBR is also making efforts to change the mindset of the tax officials and staff along with providing facilities to the taxpayers. In this regard, appropriate steps were being taken for revamping the tax machinery. The new system is so foolproof that nobody could demand bribes from the taxpayers and Model Tax Office Lahore is clear example of this.
"You pay a visit to the Model Tax Office in Lahore and ask the people coming out of the building about the behaviour of the tax officers working there. The difference in ongoing reform process will be visible."
He said that under the reform process, the CBR was making fundamental changes in the customs clearance process.
The department was devising software to considerably reduce the number of clearance stages from 12 to 1-2.
On the issue of smuggling from Afghanistan, Riaz Malik said that the menace of smuggling would be eliminated following establishment of an effective tax regime within Afghanistan.