Daily Times

On Tuesday, the Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) released its three-year performance report from 2021 to 2023, during which the department disposed of around 17,101 complaints.

Addressing a press conference, FTO Registrar Muhammad Majid Qureshi, along with Advisor Media Nazim Saleem and Advisor Customs Dr Arslan Subuctageen, highlighted the performance of the FTO year by year. The performance report covered three significant aspects of the organization: registration of complaints, disposal of complaints, and implementation of recommendations. As per the details, the FTO settled 8,128 complaints out of 8,076 in 2023 and provided relief to 6,106 and 2,867 complainants in 2022 and 2021, respectively. The number of registered complaints stood at 5,752 in 2022 and 2,816 in 2021.

In 2023, FTO Registrar Muhammad Majid Qureshi said the organization launched an aggressive outreach campaign to create public awareness about the role of the FTO office in providing speedy and cost-free justice to aggrieved taxpayers and the general public.

He said the FTO held around 115 seminars with concerned Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CCI), different Trade bodies, Tax Bars, and colleges/universities in 2023 compared to 76 such workshops and sessions organized in 2022.

To facilitate taxpayers and the general public to register complaints with the FTO office, he said a state-of-the-art automated Complaint System (COMSYS) at (https://fto.gov.pk/onlineComSys) was in place for online complaints. Besides, the complaints can also be swiftly made through WhatsApp (0334-0544460) and email (info@fto.gov.pk). He said The Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) was also requested to instruct the Cellular Mobile Operators (CMOs) for disseminating tax-complaint-related messages to the general public through different cellular companies Mobilink, Ufone, Telenor, CM Pak, and SCO.

Following this, almost 60,000 calls were received in the FTO office asking questions regarding the functions and objectives of the FTO office and modes of filing complaints. Such calls numbering 80,000 were also received on FTO’s office WhatsApp number 0334-0544460. It is essential to highlight that the President of Pakistan has upheld decisions and recommendations of the FTO in 86.01 percent of the representations filed by FBR and complainants against these decisions.

A Helpline has also been established in the FTO Secretariat, Islamabad, to facilitate the aggrieved taxpayers and help the general public by guiding them about the modes of filing complaints.

The Revenue Division (FBR), Majid Qureshi said, had been responding positively to the recommendations of FTO and had accordingly improved some of its systems by issuing SOPs/Circulars/Orders, including the SOPs for De-Registration of NTN/STRN of deceased taxpayers.

He said the FTO office was committed to rescuing taxpayers and the public on their legitimate complaints against tax officials and the system, which undermined their legal rights through maladministration, ultimately leading to financial corruption.

Replying to a question, Advisor Customs Dr. Arslan Subuctageen said that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) auctioned several non-custom paid vehicles on directives of the FTO, which fetched Rs 7 billion in 2023.