Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Thursday by pointing out the various shortcomings in the tax system, issued instructions to all its Chief Commissioners of Regional Tax Offices to improve the Broadening of Tax Base (BTB) campaign for the achievement of BTB targets. FBR, in a letter sent to all field offices, has pointed out various causes of BTB campaign not getting its due importance due to factors including poor logistic support to the BTB units, lack of ownership of the initiative, incomplete regional databases, Human Resource weaknesses and inadequate IT infrastructure crucial to achieve their full potential. The chief commissioners were asked to own the BTB initiative and to shoulder the responsibility of this key objective.
It recommends evaluation and subsequent strengthening of existing physical and human resources, allocating the best resources and establishing new structure of BTB Zones and Ranges to achieve the 2011-12 BTB targets. Keeping in view the on-ground situation, new BTB targets (over 700000 new taxpayers) have also been assigned through the letter issued here, along with the recommended steps to achieve these targets. The steps include using withholding tax regimes as a BTB tool, taxpayers’ mapping, field surveys, tapping real estate & motor vehicle registration and other possible potential areas for BTB.The communication also elaborates steps for maximising the benefits of the BTB campaign by comprehensively expanding the tax base to cover all tax streams, IT backing of all BTB efforts helping create a databank for analysis and utilisation, and monitoring of BTB targets for each team and unit. A quarterly BTB review of performance of all RTOs is also sought, to review and modify the regional and national BTB strategy. The chief commissioners will be required to furnish their quarterly review reports in the first weeks of January, April and July and the performance of the chief commissioners would mainly be based on regional BTB performance.
