The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has been instructed by the Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) to thoroughly investigate the thousands of fictitious entries made in a taxpayer’s name in the RTO Islamabad and to order an IT audit of all fictitious transactions.
A complaint made by a deputy secretary in the ministry of law and justice who was solely stating salary income on income tax forms has been resolved by the FTO. According to reports, he found hundreds of unknown entries in his tax profile.
The complainant claims that there are over 23800 fictitious entries in his or her name, including import declarations and withholding transactions.
The FTO claimed that these were most likely brought on by the complainant being assigned a test NTN.
Anyone could enter this test number and get away with it if they don’t have an NTN or don’t want to reveal their NTN. This incident is a blatant example of the systemic inefficiency and disregard for the demands of the FBR and PRAL personnel.
The FTO’s findings state that the officials of FBR in this matter, particularly PRAL, clearly shown neglect, inattention, incompetence, and ineptitude, which amounts to bad administration.
In light of this, the FTO has instructed FBR to give instructions to the Member (Information Technology) to fully investigate this matter and order an IT audit of all fraudulent transactions to be carried out by Directorate General l&I-IRs in order to determine the extent of revenue leakage and place responsibility on the parties involved, among other things.
The FTO subsequently asked the FBR to direct Member-IR (Operations) to issue instructions to all field formations for initiating legal action against those withholding agents who had improperly utilised the complainant’s name and recovered the underpaid tax.
The FTO gave the FBR instructions that the GM PRAL may be asked to explain why he or she did not address the matter that was brought up by this office and earlier by the concerned IR field formation and report compliance in 45 days.
