The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has deferred the setting up of Regional Tax Office, Sahiwal, till October 1 2017, it is reliably learnt here on Tuesday. According to tax experts, the FBR has taken the decision on the intervention of Lahore High Court where a writ petition was filed seeking suspension of jurisdiction order made effective from 1st July without posting chief commissioner and in the absence of infrastructure and database updation, resulting into problems of the taxpayers of Sahiwal, Kasur and Okara.

Hi Tech Edible Oils Pvt Limited, Sahiwal, had filed a writ petition No. 50750/2017 before the Lahore High Court pleading suspension of the jurisdiction order issued by the Board till infrastructure of new RTO is in place and database is updated. It was prayed that jurisdiction order has been issued on 29.06.2017 with effect from 01.07.2017 without doing the necessary homework and taxpayers were facing grave difficulties in respect of their pending matters as no one had jurisdiction to decide the issues. On the court's notice, the counsel of the FBR appeared and assured that the issue would be resolved within a fortnight. However, the court directed to resolve the issue within three days and fixed the hearing for 18.07.2017.

On Tuesday, the FBR counsel produced the FBR order No. 87059-R, dated 17.07.2017, through which the jurisdiction order has been made effective from 01.10.2017 instead of 01.07.2017. On that, the court disposed of the writ petition with the direction that the pending matter of the petitioner would be decided by the existing RTO, Multan within seven days. The counsel of the petitioner, Shahid Jami Advocate, when contacted, commented that due to maladministration at FBR, the routine matters are to be taken before the court for redressal. He hoped that there would be improvement in the working at FBR headquarters with the appointment of a permanent chairman.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2017