Rana Asad Amin, Auditor General of Pakistan while briefing the participants said that the tax authorities are stating that court cases are the reason behind the non-recoveries, adding that on the basis of court cases refusal of recoveries should not be acceptable. According to him, the FBR is not vigorously following the court cases, otherwise in four years major portions of the amount pointed out would have been recovered.
Senator Azam Swati while appreciating the efforts of Auditor General of Pakistan for pushing different departments to recover Rs 81 billions from various clients within a year said that Rs 2.48 billion financial losses incurred to national kitty as FBR didn't follow the court cases.
The committee was informed by the FBR officials that an amount of over Rs 16 billion is not recovered due to court cases but once courts decide the matters, the authorities will take immediate action. The committee was also informed that around 29 different cases of Inland Revenue are pending adjudication in courts. The field formation offices in Karachi and Lahore failed to make recovery of Rs 42 billion under the head of sales tax. The member FBR informed the committee members that the recovery of sales tax is a difficult task as recovery of only Rs 5 billion has been made so far in this regard.
Audit officials informed the committee members that 514 withholding agents in Karachi and Lahore did not deposit Rs 24 billion in taxes in the national exchequer. The FBR has made recovery of Rs 4 billion only in Karachi and Lahore.
Member PAC Shafqat Mehmood said that withholding agents are responsible for the non-recovery of Rs 42 billion. He said there were two forms of withholding agents ie one collected the amount but didn't submit it to the national kitty while same agents are not known to FBR but they are doing business. He said that it was a serious issue and the persons cheating the nation must have no exemption.
Senator Sherry Rehman said that FBR is one of the most powerful departments in the country equipped with all the weapons to recover due tax money outstanding against individuals and companies. She said ironically in some cases FBR is pretending that it was helpless.
The committee asked FBR officials to send a technical experts team in next PAC meeting to brief the participants in details. The meeting also directed the FBR officials to attend next meeting with full preparations and bring recovery reports to the committee.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017