The Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) Dr. Asif Mahmood Jah has said that the FTO is making concerted efforts to address the grievances of taxpayers and resolve their complaints.
Addressing an event on Monday, Dr. Asif revealed that the FTO administration is developing an automated portal. The portal will be launched soon and taxpayers will be able to use it to file complaints about tax maladministration.
The administration will act upon these complaints and carry out an independent and transparent investigation to resolve the issues taxpayers are facing.
Besides, the FTO administration has already introduced a simple mechanism for filing complaints. Any aggrieved taxpayer can either personally visit the FTO office to file a complaint or send the complaint through courier service, email, online, and fax.
The FTO also asked the business community to step forward to give their suggestions to further improve the complaint filing and redressal mechanism.
Dr. Asif expressed concerns over reports that customs officials were involved in stopping shipments unnecessarily and said that the FTO office will soon issue an order to prevent customs officials from such practice.
He also announced to establish FTO help desks all over the country to address the customs-related issues on the spot.
He also revealed that the administration has reopened custom applet tribunals that were non-functional for more than a year and a half due to several issues.
Dr. Asif added the country would not be able to achieve its economic targets without redressing the issues faced by the exporters and industrialists. He termed taxpayers as the backbone of the economy.
After assuming the charge of FTO just over a month ago, Dr. Asif has already decided on more than 300 cases of taxpayers. Most of the cases were related to sales tax and income tax complaints.