ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has found that some of its field offices were reporting duplicated revenue collection figures to the Board’s headquarters and such duplication of figures had jumped up to Rs12-13 billion, The News has learnt reliably.
The Chairman FBR Tariq Pasha has brought up this issue in Chief Commissioners’ Conference held in the FBR’s Headquarters on last weekend that had infuriated the tax collection machinery high-ups for ‘creating embarrassing situation’ for the whole department.
“The duplication in revenue collection has gone up to Rs12-13 billion and now message has been conveyed loud and clear that stern actions will be taken against those field formation allegedly involved in such practices to show improved performance,” official sources confirmed to The News here on Thursday.
When contacted to FBR’s spokesman and Member Inland Revenue (IR) Policy Dr Mohammad Irshad told The News that it was matter of internal adjustments but the FBR had never reported duplicated figures outside with any other ministry or department.
However, the sources said that the FBR was holding internal inquiry to determine facts and held accountable those who made glaring mistake and reported duplicated figures to its headquarter. “Now we have conveyed to the field formations for report revenue collection figures only after reconciliation with the State Bank of Pakistan and National Bank of Pakistan,” said the official sources and added that stern actions would be taken against those who were found involved in reporting incorrect figures to the Board.
The duplication in revenue collection figures were used to be done by the field offices mostly by end of the fiscal year. Now this practice has become norm and the field formations had started doing the same during the course of end of quarter or month basis so it came on the surface that had perturbed the high-ups of the tax collection machinery.
The issue of duplication in revenue collection became obvious by end of December in the current fiscal year when the FBR found that its dashboard and the SBP possessed different figures of revenue collection that had widened in the range of Rs 6 to Rs13 billion.
It triggered panic within the tax machinery and the high-ups decided to convene Commissioners Conference in Islamabad on last Saturday and Sunday here at Islamabad. It was deliberate move of the high-ups Haroon Akhtar Khan who has been now elevated with status of Federal Minister for Revenues, did not attend the Commissioners’ Conference because the Chairman FBR Tariq Pasha was assigned to deliver strong worded message to field formation officers for improving their performance as well as to do away with the practice of reporting duplicated revenue collection figures to the Board.
This same thing had happened in the last fiscal year when the field formations continuously reported inflated revenue collection figures when the high-ups were pinning hopes of higher collection but all hopes dashed to the ground because book adjustments resulted into slashing down the revenue collection to Rs3362 billion which were Rs70 to 80 billion less than the hopes of the previous FBR administration. “Now the field formations especially larger LTUs and RTOs have been instructed strictly to report only reconciled figures with the SBP and NBP otherwise they will have to face consequences,” the sources concluded.