LAHORE: The Regional Tax Office (RTO) Lahore has achieved the revenue target set for the month of April 2022.
Chief Commissioner RTO Lahore Nasir Iqbal told this scribe that his field formation has collected Rs18.6 billion in April against a revenue target of Rs18.3 billion. He said the RTO Lahore has collected Rs7.3 billion (65 percent) more than the same month last year. It may be noted that the RTO Lahore had collected Rs11.3 billion in April 2021.
Meanwhile, he said, the field formation has succeeded in integrating 104 Tier-1 Retailers with Point of Sale (POS) system during the month of April 2022 and the RTO Lahore is the only field formation to have post 100+ integration for April.
He further pointed out that the RTO Lahore has also the distinction of achieving 100+ integrations for the third consecutive month. The RTO Lahore has recovered Rs21 million in POS penalties and Rs7 million under the head of arrears from the bank accounts of the defaulters, he added.
It is worth noting that the RTO Lahore has also the distinction of booking a banker for hindering tax recovery from one of its account holders through freezing of account. According to sources, this was the first-ever legal action taken by any field formation against a banker for not cooperating with it on recovery of tax from one of its account holders. Similarly, a show cause notice was also issued to another banker by the RTO Lahore for leaking the information to his account holder before freezing his account. Accordingly, the said account holder had transferred his deposits before freezing of the account.
It may be noted that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) had revoked in October 2021 the clause that made it mandatory for taxmen to warn defaulters 24 hours before freezing their bank accounts, which tax lawyers dubbed as harassment and a dent to ease of doing business. The field formations have been allowed to exercise the powers vested under SRO 274(1)/2020 dated April 2nd, 2020 and Section 48 of the Sales Tax Act, 1990 for recovery of outstanding demands.
The former FBR chairman Shabbar Zaidi had made it mandatory for the tax collectors to intimate defaulters before suspending their account, keeping the FBR chairperson in loop. It may be noted that Section 140 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 deals with recovery of tax from persons holding money on behalf of a taxpayer.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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