ISLAMABAD: The Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) has unearthed a wrong act committed by the Large Taxpayer Office (LTO) Islamabad by framing an illegal case of ‘Inactive’ status to a company without issuing/serving statutory notices under the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001.
Earlier, Islamabad High Court (IHC) has referred a case to Dr. Asif Jah to investigate the allegations of maladministration by Commissioner, Member Information Technology-FBR, and LTO Islamabad officers and submit a report within three months. FTO has submitted a 10 pages report before the IHC wherein the FBR lawyer seeks time to procure FTO report.
It is reliably learnt that a petition was moved in IHC through tax lawyer Waheed Shahzad Butt, against the LTO Islamabad and Member IT. The petition was filed by a taxpayer seeking income tax refunds from LTO Islamabad and implementation of an order issued by ATIR, Islamabad to highlight the role of some LTO/ PRAL/ IT-Wing employees in maltreatment, who allegedly changed ATL status of taxpayer, to block income tax refunds. The FTO report stated that “the hearings conducted were joined by Naeem Hassan, CIR, Hassan Bin Izhar, Shakeel Ahmad Babar, Engineer Iftikhar Ali and Zaheer Ahmed from FBR, PRAL. Tax laws like all other streams of law give conclusive weightage to the proper service of notices. It is a fact conceded by PRAL that assignment Notice u/s 120(3) in the instance case was not electronically delivered in the folder of the taxpayer. Department has failed to prove that the notice in question was served. Department instead of shouldering responsibility for non-service of said notice preferred to hide behind IT system failure. All legal powers rest with tax authorities and not with the support wings/staff. It can be concluded that PRAL’s stance on this material issue is riddled with contradictions. Tax authorities/officers passing legal orders are responsible for proper service of notices and any hiding behind software glitches and failures is not justifiable”.
The FTO report questioned that how the name of Ahmed Shakeel Babar DCIR was appearing on the notice when the said officer was never posted in the said unit. Each act of fraud is certainly aims at some illicit benefits or has some specific ulterior motives to achieve through said act of fraud. Department couldn’t explain any plausible reason for incorporation of the name of an unrelated officer in the notice and termed it a mere IT distortion. Departmental position vis a viz invalidation of tax return for TY 2019 (without ascertaining proper service of notice) and visible loopholes in delivery of notice dated 20th October, 2020 is not defendable.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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