AIRLINK 175.55 Decreased By ▼ -2.01 (-1.13%)
BOP 11.01 Decreased By ▼ -0.04 (-0.36%)
CNERGY 8.29 Increased By ▲ 0.12 (1.47%)
FCCL 47.23 Decreased By ▼ -0.09 (-0.19%)
FFL 16.02 Decreased By ▼ -0.10 (-0.62%)
FLYNG 27.31 Decreased By ▼ -0.04 (-0.15%)
HUBC 142.32 Decreased By ▼ -4.59 (-3.12%)
HUMNL 13.30 Decreased By ▼ -0.21 (-1.55%)
KEL 4.44 Decreased By ▼ -0.06 (-1.33%)
KOSM 5.90 Decreased By ▼ -0.01 (-0.17%)
MLCF 61.80 Decreased By ▼ -0.22 (-0.35%)
OGDC 226.77 Decreased By ▼ -7.91 (-3.37%)
PACE 5.77 Decreased By ▼ -0.03 (-0.52%)
PAEL 44.80 Decreased By ▼ -1.61 (-3.47%)
PIAHCLA 17.88 Decreased By ▼ -0.24 (-1.32%)
PIBTL 10.47 Decreased By ▼ -0.10 (-0.95%)
POWER 12.02 Increased By ▲ 0.03 (0.25%)
PPL 185.92 Decreased By ▼ -5.88 (-3.07%)
PRL 37.16 Decreased By ▼ -0.16 (-0.43%)
PTC 24.05 Increased By ▲ 0.85 (3.66%)
SEARL 100.29 Decreased By ▼ -0.60 (-0.59%)
SILK 1.15 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
SSGC 38.51 Decreased By ▼ -1.20 (-3.02%)
SYM 14.75 Decreased By ▼ -0.28 (-1.86%)
TELE 7.73 Decreased By ▼ -0.11 (-1.4%)
TPLP 11.03 Decreased By ▼ -0.08 (-0.72%)
TRG 66.00 Decreased By ▼ -1.29 (-1.92%)
WAVESAPP 10.97 Decreased By ▼ -0.38 (-3.35%)
WTL 1.35 Decreased By ▼ -0.01 (-0.74%)
YOUW 3.78 Increased By ▲ 0.01 (0.27%)
BR100 12,826 Increased By 19.4 (0.15%)
BR30 38,861 Decreased By -842.2 (-2.12%)
KSE100 118,792 Decreased By -146.5 (-0.12%)
KSE30 36,779 Increased By 22.6 (0.06%)

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has failed to timely submit comments before the Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO), who is investigating the FBR for burdening taxpayers with heavy cost for online integration of their businesses through a private limited company.

The FTO is also investigating the FBR for violation of privacy under section 216 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 and burdening the taxpayers with heavy cost in forcefully implementation of SRO.428 for online integration of businesses and configure retail outlets with FBR’s e-computerized system.

It is reliably learnt that the office of the FTO had registered complaint against the FBR and issued notice to Chairman FBR and CCIR to submit comments on or before 16.10.2024 on the allegations contained in the complaints but FBR has not filed any comments despite service of legal notices issued under FTO Ordinance, 2000.

When contacted, tax lawyer Waheed Shahzad Butt informed earlier on the similar issue Peshawar High Court has frozen the salary of FBR Chairman for not submitting reply to repeated reminders in a pending tax case. The PHC had issued instructions to the Accountant General of Pakistan (AGP) to implement the court order.

Waheed was of the view that taxpayers expected the enforcement of law and Constitutional rights and exercised the powers conferred on FBR by the Legislature honestly in the interest of Pakistan. However, some tax officials are involved in violation of constitutional rights of the taxpayers for claiming huge rewards out of precious taxpayer’s money but they do not care to obey the orders of courts/tax ombudsman. Tax officials misusing the law must be removed from the services in the process of re-structuring/overhauling of FBR as ordered by the Apex authority Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), he accused.

To avoid heavy cost of litigation and wastage of precious time/resources, kindly issue recommendations to the FBR to provide complete documentation, SOP(s), Flow Chart of Fiscal/tax information provided to private company selected by FBR, breach of personal privacy under the law (Section 216), exorbitant charges, similar practices in neighbouring and other countries, lawful mandate to nominate one private company across Pakistan for point of sales (POS) activities, and other ancillary documents/data. The FBR should initiate proceedings under Section 198 of the ITO, 2001 against tax employees responsible for this biased, one sided forceful implementation of a good law through a private limited company at exorbitant cost, in the light of the apex court judgments PLD 2021 SC 1 and PLD 2022 SC 119, the complainant added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024

Comments

Comments are closed.