The Chief Commissioner of Regional Tax Office (RTO), Karachi, Muhammad Raza Baqir, on Saturday formally opened the VPN link between Federal Bureau of Revenue and Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PHMA) and urged the exporters to help the tax collection office in registering new tax payers to broaden the tax base.
The chief commissioner told the members of the association at PHMA House that his office wanted to solve all issues of the exporters at the earliest and the online linking of exporters to FBR was one of the key demands which he had met.
He said that the RTO was situated in a high risk area of the city where access of many exporters was difficult, particularly for car parking reasons, and the online profile sharing would help both RTO and the taxpayers. He said the online facility would help also RTO in processing cases quickly.
Baqir said that the FBR data would also be available for exporters on the same link and made it clear that there was no bar on extending of the link to other exporting associations. Regarding audit, he said that the RTO would communicate reasons for audit and would give 10 days' time to enable the audit-selected taxpayers to satisfy the commissioner with answers, or face the process.
He said that RTO would see why it was asking of the 5 years' old audit records from taxpayers, adding that such complaints should occur. He regretted the law tax paying trend in the society and wanted the businesses community's share should increase in the revenue collection.
He said that RTO's annual revenue collection target was Rs 110 billion and till April it had surpassed the set figure, and hoped that the annual statistics would be encouraging. Earlier, Chairman of PHMA, Saleem Parekh, said his association was making efforts to establish the VPN linking PHMA and FBR to facilitate exporters and the tax officers to process the cases rapidly. He said that finally the facility had been set up, hoping that it would solve many problems. He complained that exporters' refund cases could not be so far processed for many years and urged the chief commissioner to look into the matter on urgent basis.
He said that exporters were also facing audit issues, as letter from RTO they were receiving for the past five years' records. He added that this issue was also needed to be solved. He said that RTO should write specific audit problem to the taxpayers so that they could come up with the documents exactly needed for the process. The Chairman of Pakistan Apparel Forum and Zonal Chairman of PHMA, Junaid Makhda, expressed concerns on tax related issues. Later, Raza Baqir personally inaugurated the VPN facility.