ISLAMABAD: In order to facilitate the taxpayers and expeditiously resolve the complaints, the Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) has opted for informal resolution of complaints in many cases.

The FTO officials told media here on Wednesday that the same has started to provide relief to the taxpayers in hours. In one such case, a petition was filed before the FTO, seeking appointment for redressal of a systemic hardship, whereby, uploading of “Credit Notes”, in terms of section 9 of the Sales Tax Act, 1990, read with Rules 19-22 of the Sales Tax Rules, 2006 have reportedly been denied through generic messages generated by the FBR’s portal.

Precisely, the petitioner had agitated that while aforesaid legal and regulatory provisions categorically allow uploading of debit/credit notes, “illegal and unlawful check placed on FBR web portal, the registered persons are not able to reverse the effect of sales tax on sales returned by their unregistered buyers while they pay back the component of sales tax to such buyers.”

During preliminary investigation, the FTO office observed that the issue raised revolves around some technical hiccups therefore instead of resorting to formal investigation proceedings under the FTO Ordinance, 2000, provisions of Section 33 relating to informal resolution have been invoked for instant resolution relief.

The FTO Secretariat immediately contacted both the petitioner and the concerned DBAs at Karachi and through telephonic discussions the matter was resolved before the closing of office hours.

The petitioner, Chartered Accountant Company confirmed that the issue stands resolved and appreciated the quick informal mechanism adopted by the FTO Secretariat, which by-passes lengthy investigation proceedings.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022