The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has decided that the officers of small cadre of Inland Revenue (Sales Tax) shall be given the designations of Deputy Commissioner (Sales Tax), Additional Commissioner (Sales Tax) and Chief or Commissioner (Sales Tax). It is learnt here on Thursday that the decision has been taken in the last meeting of the FBR Board-in-Council.
Details revealed that the issues relating to the small cadre of Inland Revenue (Sales Tax) were discussed threadbare in the Board-in-Council meetings held in April, 2015 and June, 2015, respectively. In the last meeting, the following decisions pertaining to the small cadre were made:
Firstly, the officers of small cadre shall be assigned the designations of Deputy Commissioner (Sales Tax), Additional Commissioner (Sales Tax) and Chief or Commissioner (Sales Tax) and secondly, the issue whether or not the officers of small cadre can perform statutory functions under the Sales Tax Act, 1990 shall be referred to Law Division for its opinion to that extent.
The FBR Chief (Management) informed Members of the Board that the Law Division has held there does not appear any prohibition for appointing an officer of small cadre of Inland Revenue to exercise powers and functions of any authorities mentioned in Section 30 of Sales Tax Act, 1990 on the principle of "what is not prohibited is permissible". It was however opined that the Establishment Division OM dated 12th September, 2009 on the creation of IRS and PCS has overriding effect. FBR Member (IR-Policy) was of the view that the OM under consideration has enabled the formation of two different occupational group, ie, Inland Revenue Service and Pakistan Customs; hence the OM shall remain applicable for the purposes of assigning powers and functions under the statutes administered by FBR. Chairman FBR, however, asserted that when the proposed job descriptions do not provide any statutory powers to the officers of Small cadre, rather entrusts upon them only the support functions, it becomes immaterial whether the OM has any preference over the opinion of the Law Division.
It was decided with consensus that the officers of small cadre shall be given the designations as Board-in-Council in its meeting held on June 3, 2015; the officers of small cadre shall not be given any statutory powers and functions under the Sales Tax Act, 1990; the officers of small cadre shall be given only support functions in order to assist the chief Commissioners and Commissioners of Inland Revenue in discharge of their functions related to sales tax and The proposed job descriptions of the officers of small cadre shall be circulated amongst members of the Board for their opinion and shall be finalised in the next meeting of the Board-in-Council, the FBR added.