State poorer, burdening every citizen of this country with enormous debts. We would not have required any borrowing at all, if tax losses were historically not incurred.
If we look at the Human Resource (HR) profile in FBR, one finds that more than 90% of the staff consists of persons of grade 16 or below with head count of about 20,000. The total officer above the rank of grade 17 and above are 1,966. This profile itself speaks volume about the working of the organisation. The absolute numbers and the ratio of support staff to professional staff is untenable. This 90% staff represents the part of the problem as they are the people who are surplus in the organisation, lacking ability and are in-fact counterproductive.
As tax administration has to deal with state-of-the-art aggressive tax planning schemes involving cross border financial transactions, a tax audit solely comprising of internally promoted auditors could encounter difficulties detecting and analysing these schemes effectively.
Therefore FBR can also alternatively think of induction of mid-career recruitment directly into higher grades of experienced tax consultants with experience in law and accounting. This measure would be an effective countermeasure and would also attend to the needs and of large taxpayer unit with large size clients.
In short to medium term, the curriculum of the training directorate need to be augmented and the training made more rigorous. The period of specialised training should be extended to at-least three years to cater for modern external economic challenges.
Moreover a minimum of six months practical training should be mandatory before a formal posting to make the officer well versed in all practical aspects. All best performers in training and high achievers should be allowed to choose the audit wing and registration wing in the order of priority. All the staff in these wings be allowed initially to get double salary provided they maintain a certain level of performance criteria.
Double compensation should also be offered to outstanding performers in operation or service and support wings. The training needs to be a continuous part & parcel of professional staff at FBR. The Directorate should offer executive training programmes for all levels of staff at the FBR. These executive courses should be mandatory and performance at these courses should be linked with future promotions till grade 20. Moreover the high performers may be allowed to stay in Audit and Registration wings.