FTO Office attained new heights during 2011: Suddle

Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) Dr Muhammad Shoaib Suddle on Friday announced that the FTO Office has achieved new heights during 2011, as taxpayers obtained record refunds of Rs 7.89 billion, as 181,880 customs duty drawback cases, involving refunds of Rs 6.63 billion were settled, compensations on delayed payment of refunds, in 760 major tax-related cases were implemented by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and average time taken to decide a complaint was exceptionally brought down to 60 days during 2011.
Declaring 2011 and 2012 as 'Year of Implementation', Dr Suddle said the 2011 has been an historic year in several respects for the Office of the FTO. The exceptional achievements of the FTO have added new milestones to its history. The Year 2012 would continue to be declared as the 'Year of Implementation' as we have to ensure implementation of the FTO orders within 30 days. Otherwise, the taxpayers would not have faith in the office.
Sharing major achievements of the FTO Office during 2011, he said that in 2011, a sum of Rs 7.89 billion was refunded to the taxpayers as compared to Rs 7.08 billion during 2010. This included refunds amounting to Rs 606 million in 455 income tax cases, Rs 570 million in 107 sales tax cases, and Rs 81 million in 15 customs cases. The highest amount of refund issued in a single income tax case, sales tax case and customs case was Rs 143.31 million, Rs 143.7 million (duty drawback case) and Rs 401.09 million respectively.
He further informed that the taxpayers also received a sum of Rs 6.16 million in compensation for delayed payment of refunds in 81 cases. In addition, under his suo motu jurisdiction, the FTO settled 181,880 duty draw-back customs cases involving refunds of Rs 6.63 billion during 2011 as against 194,056 duty draw-back cases involving refunds of Rs 4.9 billion in 2010. It is worth noting that the taxpayers received Rs 7.89 billion due to intervention of FTO during 2011, which was almost 4 times of the total amount that they got during 2000-2009, and 36 times of the average per annum taxpayers received during the same ten-year period.
He said that another milestone that the FTO was able to achieve during 2011 was in terms of disposal time of complaints. The average time taken to decide a complaint was - exceptionally - brought down to 60 days, as compared to 67 days for 2010 and 117 days for 2009. There is no Ombudsman office in the world which has achieved such a high level of efficiency in handling taxpayers' complaints.
Under his thematic approach, FTO declared 2011 as the 'year of implementation'. With exceptional effort, FTO's decisions in as many as 760 cases were got implemented by the FBR during 2011, as compared to 331 cases during 2010 and 170 cases during 2009. In other words, the number of decisions got implemented during 2011 was 2.3 times more than 2010. More specifically, the implemented decisions pertained to Recommendations issued in 2011 (222 cases), 2010 (425 cases), 2009 (48 cases), 2008 (52 cases), 2007 (6 cases), 2006(2 cases), 2005(2 cases), 2003(1 case) and 2002(2 cases), the FTO maintained.
In 2011, the FTO received 1390 individual taxpayer complaints of which 706 (50.80 percent) pertained to income tax, 349 (25.10 percent) to customs, 328 (23.60 percent) to sales tax, and 7 (0.50 percent) to Federal Excise Duty. Of these, 1218 (87.63 percent) complaints were decided by December 31, 2011. Of the decided complaints, 1053 (86.45 percent) ended up in favour of taxpayers. For the first time in the history of FTO, the taxpayers' grievances in as many as 370 complaints filed during 2011 were redressed during the investigation phase. The focus was shifted to getting the disputes resolved, from issuing Recommendations at the end of investigation. Out of Recommendation issued in 683 complaints during 2011, FBR implemented 222 cases and filed Representations in 211 cases. In addition, 184 complaints pending from 2010 were also disposed of by March 31, 2011, he stated.
Dr Suddle was happy to announce that in a 2011 study conducted by the Islamic Countries Society of Statistical Sciences (ISOSS), a Lahore-based independent research organisation, over 90 percent of the respondents who had actually interacted with FTO rated FTO as the most helpful and most clean public sector organisation in Pakistan. The advisors and staff of FTO deserve generous appreciation for having achieved such high a performance level.
According to Transparency International's 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index, Pakistan score in 2011 was 2.5 out of 10 as compared to 2.3 in 2010. One of the four organisations that contributed in improving Pakistan's rank in 2011 was FTO Office, the other three being Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, Judiciary, and the Ministry of Defence for applying PPRA rules.
The Transparency International report also rated the FTO as one of the cleanest institutions of Pakistan, Dr Suddle said. While the FTO has emerged as a role model in improving good governance in Pakistan, the problem of maladministration is deep-rooted and needs concerted efforts on the part of both Government and FBR to effectively control it, the FTO added.