"We are considering to ensure more facilitation to taxpayers through simplification of taxation matters," Salman Nabi, Member CBR (Income Tax) told Business Recorder.
This exercise would benefit all the taxpayers in general and salaried class, in particular, he added. He, however, ruled out any possibility of cut in rate of income tax for the salaried class, saying minimum tax ratio for salaried persons was not more than 3.5-percent and in certain cases it comes to only 1-percent.
Therefore, there is no need to effect any change in income tax rate for the salaried persons in the forthcoming budget, he said. "We will facilitate the salaried class in valuation and work allowances etc," he pointed out.
To a question regarding the broadening of tax base, the CBR member said, the department so far had received more than 1.3 million income tax returns. Giving figure of revenue collection, he said that the target of income tax up to March 31, 2006 was Rs 141 billion but the department was above the target, as it had managed to collect Rs 143 billion.
The most significant aspect, which needs to be highlighted is that people now are voluntarily paying taxes that is very healthy sign depicting their trust in the tax policies.
About conducting audit, he said that this exercise had never been stopped and 'desk audit' had always been in place. Desk audit means scrutinising the returns within the office and afterward detecting the discrepancies, if any. Now this work is being done through computer, he added.
Salman Nabi said that one of the important tasks the CBR currently is undertaking is to educate taxpayers. "Through detection of discrepancies in income tax returns, actually we are educating the people by pointing out the flaws in their returns so that they could not repeat the same and fill in their returns correctly in future'.
About CBR's controversial nexus system, he said as a matter of fact, it is a continuous process and currently the department is focusing on imports.
"This system will enable us to make importers complete profiles with complete data about income tax, sales tax and customs as well as volume of imports etc.
This profile work will reflect all taxation matters of the taxpayers. Ultimately, this system has to be converted in to "ITM' ie, Integrated Tax Management System, under which the department will have profiles of all taxpayers about their tax data.