Participants of a roundtable discussion organised by the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS) here on Wednesday agreed that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) will have to be made operationally autonomous to improve tax collection and control corruption within the organisation. Dr Muhammad Shoaib Suddle, the Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO), who was the main speaker of the roundtable titled “Institution of Ombudsman and the Taxpayer Grievance System: An Overview” shared that the FTO had disposed of 15,827 complaints out of the total 16,000 cases filed with it since its establishment in 2000, adding that it had decided 85 percent of the cases in favour of the taxpayers.
Dr Suddle shared that FBR was required to implement FTO’s decision within 30 days or refer the case to representation before the president, because there was no appeal against FTO decisions in any other court. He said since his assumption of the office of FTO, the average time for resolution of a complaint had been reduced from 117 days in 2009 to 60 days in 2011, and that out of the total 7.89 billion refunded by the FTO to the taxpayers since its inception, 5.98 billion were refunded during his term. Similarly, he said implementation of FTO decisions had improved from 170 cases in 2009 to 760 cases in 2011.
Dr Suddle believed that option of representation to the president by the aggrieved party was a costly delaying process. He added with the appeal to the president, the implementation of FTO decision was stayed automatically pending presidential response, which usually takes at least two years. Dr Tariq Hassan, Attorney and Advocate, said that according to Article 199, it was unconstitutional to stay a financial matter beyond six months.
Dr Suddle termed FBR’s lack of required will and capacity to reform as another major challenge to the work of FTO. He suggested a fixed term of service for the chairman of FBR to save him from political influences. He was of the view that ideally the FBR should have been able to take care of most of the individual complaints coming to the FTO so that the FTO could concentrate on systemic problems in the grievance redress mechanisms of the FBR. He also called form improved investigative capacity of FTO and greater public awareness about the institution and its work.
Dr Abdullah Yousaf, former chairman of FBR, called for a systemic reform within the FBR, which he believed was hampered by frequent policy changes with changes in the government. Dr Gulfaraz Ahmed, former federal secretary, called for documentation of the economy for improving the tax-to-GDP ratio and to tap on the actual revenue potential of the country. Dr Tariq Hassan argued that an emphasis on rectifying how the taxpayer money is spent would also be instrumental in improving the tax-to-GDP ratio.
Other participants of the roundtable were Mr Ashraf Azim, President of IRS, Brig (r) Bashir Ahmed, Senior Fellow at IRS, Dr Pierre Mayaudon, Deputy head of the EU Delegation, Farhan Bokhari, senior journalist. Tahir Dhindsa, Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), and Nouman Khan, Executive Committee Member, Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
