Daily Times

KARACHI: The amnesty scheme for smuggled or non-duty paid motor vehicles announced by Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has caused major loss of at least Rs 43.728 million to the national exchequer in duty and taxes of 556 luxury vehicles is short-paid, Daily Times has learnt.

Federal government vide SRO172(I)/2013 dated 5.3.2013 had directed that smuggled or non-duty paid motor vehicles, having non-tampered engine or chassis numbers, which have been seized or voluntarily presented to Customs on or before March 31, 2013, shall be allowed release on payment of redemption fine along with duty and taxes, official documents, available with Daily Times revealed.

Accordingly, the cases of vehicles covered under these notifications were processed at different collectorates /customs stations and the vehicles were released as per terms and conditions set under these notifications, it said.

However, in the light of report of Federal Tax Ombudsman on Smuggled Vehicles Amnesty Scheme, 2013 issued on February 14, 2014, Directorate General of Post Clearance Audit was assigned with the task of auditing assessments of all amnesty vehicles in order to quantify revenue loss due to under assessment and non-compliance with prescribed or required formalities by each collectorate.

An audit team comprising Rashid Munir, Deputy Director, Directorate of Post Clearance Audit, Karachi, Javed Hassan, Principal Appraiser and three Appraising Officers namely Abdul Aziz, Rana Muhammad Naseer and Zulfiqar Zaman was constituted to conduct audit of assessment of all vehicles cleared through MCC Appraisement West, Karachi under Smuggled Vehicles Amnesty Scheme, 2013, according to documents.

The duty and taxes assessed by the group were cross checked with the duty/taxes paid by the owner of respective vehicles as shown in the Duty Bill available in each files. In addition to that, following information was minutely checked in respect of each vehicle i.e. chassis number, year of manufacturing and engine capacity.

The scrutiny of vehicles documents , revealed that a total number of 5958 files were opened in the Collectorate. Of these 5507 original files were made available to the audit team for audit/scrutiny. These files also included 912 number of files already audited by the Directorate of Post Clearance Audit, Customs, Lahore.

In 556 files, duty and taxes have been short-realized as the vehicles were assessed at a value lower than actual/indicative assessable value provided by FBR for assessment of vehicles of varying capacities.

The break up of duty/taxes which needs to be recovered include: Rs 82,542 on vehicles up to 800 CC, Rs 50,240 on 801 to 1000 CC, Rs 864,229 on 1001 to 1300 CC, Rs 22,507,858 on 1301 to 1500CC, Rs 835,073 on 1501 to 1800 CC, Rs 5,706,526 on 1801 to 3000CC and Rs 13,681,860 on above 3000CC.

When contacted, Deputy Director, Directorate of Post Clearance Audit Karachi, Rashid Munir told Daily Times that a total of 5507 files were presented to the audit team, out of which assessment made in 4951 files were found.

“However, duty and taxes in some 556 files have been short it was realized that the vehicles were assessed at a lower value than that available as the indicative guidelines/slabs provided by the FBR for assessment. Hence, an amount of Rs 43,728,328 needs to be recovered”, Deputy Director added.