Daily Times

KARACHI: The Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) has advised the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to address systemic flaws in view of the high number of complains against the tax authority.

In the year 2017, out of 1,860 complaints decided by the FTO, 1,385 or 74.5 percent were decided in favour of complainants. The trend of such decisions in favour of the complainants since 2011 indicates that the complaints of taxpayers are generally based upon facts and their dissatisfaction and discontentment from the tax-collectors is not without reason, said the FTO in its annual report for the year 2017.

During the year 2017, 2,101 complaints were investigated. FTO decided 1,860 cases comprising 1,617 fresh complaints received during 2017 and 243 complaints carried forward from the previous years.

In 2011, 1,207 complaints were decide in favour of complainants, which was 86.09 percent of the total complaints received against the FBR in the year. Similarly, 1,414 complaints were decided against FBR by FTO in 2012, indicating 88.54 percent ratio of overall complaints, 1,438 complaints were decided in favour of taxpayers in 2013 with the ratio of 77.48 percent, 1,108 complaints with the ratio of 71.58 percent were decided against FBR in 2014, while 1,227 complaints were decided against the FBR in 2015 amongst total complaints, showing 76 percent ratio.

In 2016, 1,385 cases were decided in favour of complainants, comprising 78.9 percent of total complaints received against the FBR.

The category-wise break-up of the fresh complaints received as a percentage of total complaints indicates that the complaints received in the category of income tax constitute more than 60 percent of all others while 26.7 percent complaints were filed in the category of sales tax, 10.9 percent complaints were filed in customs and remaining were filed in categories of federal excise duty (FED), freedom of information and others (wrong filings, etc), respectively.

On the recommendations of FTO, the FBR has addressed 593 refund claims of the tax payers in the year 2017 and Rs 11.54 million has been refunded.

Considering the complexity and diversity involved in the disposal of public complaints about tax matters, the institution of the FTO was created through the Establishment of the Office of Federal Tax Ombudsman Ordinance, 2000, with the mandate to deal with complaints against officials of Revenue Division/Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), investigate cases of maladministration pointed out by the aggrieved taxpayers and public, and give suitable recommendations for dispensation of justice and appropriate action, if the maladministration is proved.

Headquarters of FTO Secretariat is at Islamabad and its regional offices are located at Karachi, Quetta, Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Gujranwala and Peshawar. Most of the complaints are received in Karachi, Lahore and Multan offices followed by Islamabad and Faisalabad. Due to less work, offices at Abbottabad and Sukkur were closed during the last months of the 2017 and work shifted to Peshawar and Karachi respectively.

Published in Daily Times, April 15^th 2018.