KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is developing an
online hub to accumulate details of withholding tax agents, their collection
and further disbursal to the tax authorities in order to plug revenue leakages
and address discrepancies, a senior official said on Friday.
“The
digital directory will be ready in a week and instructions in this regard have
been issued to the Pakistan Revenue Automation Private Limited,” Rehmatullah
Khan Wazir, Member Inland Revenue (Policy) told The News.
Presently,
the data of withholding taxes is scattered and the tax machinery takes action
on random basis. Withholding agents collect taxes on behalf of the FBR
and deposit them to national exchequer. Withholding taxes make around 68
percent of the total collection of direct taxes.
The
FBR collected Rs831.4 billion in withholding taxes during the 2015/16 fiscal
year as compared to Rs691.2 billion in the preceding fiscal year, depicting
20.3 percent growth. Wazir said the whole tax machinery would be able to access
this database to take an appropriate action. The data would be available at the
national level.
“The
main database will be available with the Director General Withholding Taxes,”
he added, “while chief commissioners will have an access to the data on
jurisdiction basis. Commissioner of Inland Revenue will also be given an access
to zone-wise data.”
Member
Inland Revenue said the authorised tax officials will compare the tax deduction
and payment by each withholding agent. “In case of any discrepancy, the zone
will take further action.”
Wazir,
who also holds an additional charge of Member Inland Revenue (Operations), said
the digital directory will have details of all withholding agents along with
their collection and payments in term of value and volume.
The
digital directory will display the withholding agents corresponding to their
sectors. The FBR convened a meeting of commissioners of Inland Revenue
(Withholding Tax) at its headquarters in Islamabad this week to review the
existing position of collection under various heads of withholding taxes.
Member Inland Revenue (Policy) presented the digital directory proposal during
the meeting.
A
couple of years back, DG Withholding Taxes issued procedure for monitoring of
withholding taxes, considering an ever-increasing size of withholding tax
collection. It was told that in a number of cases tax was deducted by
withholding tax agents but not timely deposited to the government treasury and
the defaulters went unpunished. “Due to no desk audit and no real time
check on the business transaction/evasion, timely deposit of tax deducted by
the withholding agents is open to doubts,” said a document.
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