Undocumented sectors: FBR to conduct physical survey of retailers

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) will conduct physical surveys of retailers operating in the undocumented sectors. According to the FBR’s Inland Revenue reform plan, the FBR will conduct different kinds of surveys in future. The physical surveys in select undocumented sectors have been given top priority.

The physical surveys will be conducted in very select areas such as certain categories of retailers in situations where third-party databases, remote monitoring and other technological or integration solutions are not effective.

The FBR will explore practicable techniques to verify the accuracy of reporting by the informal economy. This reform action will undertake research to identify ways in which income reporting can be verified for sectors which cannot be covered by remote monitoring through the point of sales (POS), track and trace or withholding taxes.

The reform plan revealed that there is no mechanism to conduct systematic and independent perception surveys to monitor public confidence in the FBR. The FBR will also introduce taxpayer surveys to establish what is working well and where we need to improve our service to taxpayers.

Specially designed surveys will be conducted periodically to seek taxpayers’ views and perceptions regarding the complexity, hurdles, and barriers in the way of compliance, as well as problems in interactions with the tax administration, incidence of corruption, and costs of compliance. Taxpayers’ feedback will be sought regarding specific components and processes of the IRS and used to generate actionable information for reform and process reengineering, the FBR said.

The FBR will integrate and manage current accounts of taxpayers. In this connection, the FBR will develop a centralized tax ledger for a taxpayer system with automatic updated functionality of tax payments by the taxpayer. The integrated current account of a taxpayer will represent a complete history, detailing the status of the financial position of the taxpayer, FBR’s report added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022