The Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) has directed to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to thoroughly investigate the thousands of fake entries on a taxpayer’s name in the RTO Islamabad and order an IT audit of all fake transactions.
The FTO has disposed of a complaint filed by a Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Law and Justice who was filing income tax returns declaring income from salary only. Reportedly he has discovered thousands of unknown entries appearing in his tax profile.
According to the complainant, there are approximately 23800 fake entries in the complainant’s name including import declarations and withholding transactions.
The FTO said that these are probably due to the fact that a test NTN had been allotted to the complainant.
Any person who doesn’t have an NTN or anyone who doesn’t want to disclose his NTN, could insert this test number and get away with it. This situation speaks volumes about systemic inefficiency and neglect of FBR and PRAL employees, which needs to be addressed.
According to the findings of the FTO, neglect, inattention, incompetence, and ineptitude observed by the officers of FBR in this case, especially PRAL is obvious and tantamount to maladministration.
On this ground, the FTO has directed FBR to issue instructions to the Member (Information Technology) to thoroughly investigate this matter and order an IT audit of all fake transactions to be conducted by Directorate General l&I-IRs, so as to gauge the extent of revenue leakage and fix responsibility on the individuals concerned, etc.
The FTO further directed the FBR to direct Member-IR (Operations) to issue instructions to all field formations for taking action under the law against those withholding agents identified through above referred investigative IT audit, who have misused the identity of the complainant and recover the short-paid tax.
The FTO instructed to the FBR that the GM PRAL’s explanation may be called for not responding to the situation, raised by this office and earlier by concerned IR field formation and report compliance in 45 days.
