Home »Taxation » Pakistan » Contempt petition: LHC issues notice to tax authorities

  • News Desk
  • Mar 13th, 2018
  • Comments Off on Contempt petition: LHC issues notice to tax authorities
Lahore High Court (LHC) has issued a notice to tax authorities of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) in a contempt of court petition for non-implementation on an order passed by the LHC. It is reliably learnt that contempt petition has been moved by a Gujranwala-based taxpayer through Advocate Waheed Shahzad Butt.

The petition stated that the FBR chairman has failed to implement the order passed by the LHC, wherein the LHC has confirmed/revived recommendations issued by the Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) to the FBR to refund tax deposited under protest and launch an investigation why Directorate of Investigation & Intelligence (I&I) failed to file an appeal against the light sentences awarded to mastermind of tax fraud scam and conduct an enquiry to identify if any PRAL officials were involved in the scheme and to proceed against the defaulters.

Sources told this correspondent that the LHC has recorded its findings that the act of the FBR to recover sale tax from a taxpayer without proving that he was involved in a tax fraud was tantamount to maladministration in terms of Section 2(3) of the FTO Ordinance, 2000. In this case of novel nature following recommendations were issued by the FTO to the FBR to: (i) direct the chief commissioner to refund amount deposited by complainant under protest, as there was no legal order in the field at the relevant time; (ii) direct the commissioner to cancel the order-in-original; (iii) conduct an enquiry to identify if any PRAL officials were involved in the scheme and to proceed against the defaulters, as per law; (iv) launch an investigation into circumstances why the officials of the Directorate of Investigation and Intelligence did not file an appeal against the apparently light sentences awarded to those who seemingly masterminded the scam. The petitioner stated, "It is of paramount public interest that the people, after obtaining an order of the court, should not feel helpless or without any remedy when such order is flouted by the public functionaries like respondent IRS officers working in the revenue agency FBR. Rule of law is the foundation of the democratic society. The judiciary is guardian of rule of law. If orders of the court are disobeyed with impunity by those who owe it an obligation to society to preserve the rule of law, not only individual litigants would suffer, the whole administration of justice would also be brought into disrepute. Everyone, whether individually or collectively is unquestionably under the supremacy of law. Whoever he may be, how high he is, he is under the law. The dignity and authority of the courts have to be respected and protected at all costs.

"Factual grounds prove the fact that the FBR functionaries neither demonstrate effectively nor prove convincingly that they take the duty of applicability & enforcement of law seriously or follow the statutory obligations judiciously but through their attitude, they ultimately expose their negligence, inattention and arbitrariness in the discharge of their duties and responsibilities. The attitude of FBR functionaries ultimately unmasks the picture that FBR functionaries are follower of only one policy, ie, "Save Your Skin Strategy". The present policy of "save your skin' is indeed a major cause of lot of avoidable legal battle amongst law abiding taxpayers. Apparently due to negligence on the part of FBR functionaries there would be long legal battle amongst the taxpayers and tax functionaries solely at the cost of public exchequer (taxpayer money). Mindset of the higher authorities to "pass the buck" needs to be changed in true spirit, in the interest of better tax administration and quality taxpayer facilitation."

Copyright Business Recorder, 2018


the author

Top
Close
Close