The Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) expert team has started drafting proposed 1,000 amendments in different laws, rules, and regulations including “Rules of Business, 1973” and the Federal Board of Revenue Act of 2007.
Sources told ProPakistani that the major amendments would be done in the “Rules of Business, 1973”, Customs Act 1969, Sales Tax Act, Federal Excise Act, and Income Tax Ordinance 2001 under the restructuring plan of the FBR.
The FBR or FBR Chairman being competent authority would be changed or replaced with the new authority or Board in line with the FBR’s restructuring exercise. Around 1,000 amendments would be required in different laws under the Board’s restructuring. These included new legislation, amendments to the existing laws, and abolition of old laws. The new laws would be introduced and some existing laws would be repealed.
According to the sources, the government is undertaking the restructuring of FBR, and its finalization requires amendments to the FBR Act of 2007.
The proposed Customs Oversight Board and Inland Revenue Oversight Board would comprise FBR, the Secretary Revenue Division; the secretary Finance Division; the Secretary Commerce Division, and private members. Almost all Boards have private members under the proposed restructuring plan.
The operational heads of the FBR would remain from the services side (Inland Revenue and customs). The operations side would be controlled by the FBR officials and they would have total control. However, no private member would interfere in the operations side of the FBR.
The performance evaluation of the proposed Director Generals of the IR and Customs would be done by the Customs Oversight Board and Inland Revenue Oversight Board. The key performance indicators (KPIs) would be assigned to the tax officials by the said Oversight Boards. The Boards would also evaluate the revenue collection performance and targets to be assigned to the IR and customs departments.
Similarly, there would also be a Federal Policy Board and Tax Policy Office separated from the FBR. The Federal Policy Board and Tax Policy Office would have their own separate functions. The government would also create separate wings to look after the human resource-related issues of the tax machinery.
The preparation of the Finance Bill would also be done at the level of the Federal Policy Board and Tax Policy Office.
