The Facilitation and Taxpayers Education (FATE) wing of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Monday arranged a Taxpayers’ Interaction Seminar. The interactive dialogue between FBR and representatives of Rawalpindi-Islamabad Chambers of Commerce and Trade, Tax bars and members of the business community attended the seminar. It was the first of a series of interactive seminars to be held in major cities including Lahore and Karachi.
The seminar that was chaired by Chairman FBR, Salman Siddique attended by top officials of FBR, Chief Economist USAID Thomas Morris, CEO Competitiveness Support Fund Shahab Khawaja and consultants of CSF Abdullah Yousuf and Habib Fakhruddin, among others. Addressing the seminar, the Chairman FBR stressed the need to bring the Taxpayers and FBR closer and to remove misunderstandings, if any, to build a stronger relationship. He emphasized the need to increase the Tax-to-GDP ratio to increase revenue collection for nation building and development. “I believe that everyone with an income above the exemption level should be taxed”. He stressed the need of capacity building of the federal, provincial and local tax machinery for better revenue collection system.
The Chairman FBR also underlined the importance of these interactive sessions stating that these facilitation efforts of FBR should also be considered as the start of consultative process for general and specific suggestions and also asked the Chambers to give their written proposal to FBR for the next finance bill. Speaking on the occasion Abdullah Yousuf said that private sector should also come forward and create its own think tanks to provide the necessary research input for putting forward concrete proposals.
He said that private sector should support the government’s policies if these are backed by solid research. He said that with the introduction of automation in the tax system, all tax information should be gathered electronically so that a data warehouse can be established to cross reference the data. A detailed presentation on the working of the FATE Wing and its initiatives for facilitation and education of the taxpayers was given to explain the e-services, including the FBR’s website and FATE helpline as well as the future initiatives undertaken by the Wing to achieve the organizational objectives.
