ISLAMABAD – Identifying potential taxpayers by obtaining data from NADRA, Federal Board of Revenue is in the process of broadening its tax base, the government informed the Tax Reform Coordination Group.
The Minister for Finance Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh chaired the meeting of the TRCG on Tuesday. Three sub-groups of TRCG on customs, sales tax and federal excise and income tax presented their recommendations at the meeting. FBR officials briefed the meeting on the expeditious refund system (ERS) that has been refined to clear portion of the claim for which goods declarations have been cross-matched.
The system will be re-run periodically to clear any remaining process of the claim. Since the inception of the centralized cheque issuance from September last year, 22,734 cheques worth Rs 14.2 billion have been issued compared to 6172 cheques of Rs 4.4 billion in the same period last year, chairman FBR said, adding that delay in refunds was being curbed.
The sub group on customs included Ahmed Waqar, Muhammad Sulaiman, Abid Hassan and Shahid Abdullah, who recommended setting up of a valuation committee including FBR, governor SBP, ministry of commerce and representatives of private sector to come up with measures to deal with wrong declarations and under-invoicing including availability of reliable valuation data.
