Intensifying the process of revamping the taxation system of the country, the government during the past three years has taken numerous steps to make it taxpayer-friendly and effective, which in return has helped growth in revenue collection. According to the Three Years Performance Report released on Thursday, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has been striving to bring ease for the taxpayers to make them tax compliant and targeted all policies at providing a conducive environment for the business community to thrive without constraints of unnecessary burden of taxes. According to the report, the objective of reforms was to increase FBR’s autonomy by reducing the external influence to effectively ensure managing its performance; champion the shift towards direct taxation as the primary source of tax revenue as opposed to indirect taxes and incentivise businesses to become a part of the formal economy, thus adding larger sources of tax income to the national exchequer. It also envisages to simplify tax assessment rules for corporations and small businesses, integrate tax registration with associated processes to reduce the cost of paying taxes, improve audits by establishing risk engines and smart algorithms to identify potential taxpayers for audit; publish names of non-compliant taxpayers and strongly pursue large tax evaders; and crackdown on corrupt practices that promote tax evasion. According to a report, FBR had performed exceptionally well by achieving the revenue target for the last financial year 2020-21. The institutional reforms initiated by the present government have started showing results as FBR has collected net revenue of Rs4,732 billion during July 2020 to June 2021 period, which has exceeded the target of R 4, 691 billion by Rs41 billion. This represents a growth of about 18pc over the collection of Rs3,997 billion during the same period in the FY 2019-20. The gross collections increased from Rs4,132 billion during this period in FY 2019-20 to Rs4,983 billion in outgoing FYr 2020-21 showing an increase of 21pc. FBR disbursed refunds of Rs251 billion in the outgoing FY 2020-21 compared to Rs135 billion in the Financial Year 2019-20, showing an increase of 86pc. Income tax returns for tax year-2020 have reached 3.01 million as on June 30, 2021 compared to 2.67 million in tax Year 2019, showing an increase of 12.5pc. The tax deposited with returns in tax year 2020 was Rs57 billion compared to only Rs34 billion in tax year-2019 showing an increase of 50pc. Around 11,100 Point of Sale (POS) terminals have been integrated with the real time reporting system of FBR till June 30, 2021. Pakistan Customs has collected Rs42 billion under the head of customs duty in FY 2020-21 against Rs626 billion collected last year showing growth of 18.5pc. During July 2020 to June 2021, smuggled goods worth Rs57.7 billion have been seized as compared to Rs36 billion in July 2019 to June 2020 thus showing an increase of 58pc. Directorate general of intelligence and investigation-IR showed commendable performance during July 2020 to June 2021. During this period, the directorate general forwarded 1,608 investigation reports and red alerts to the field formations involving revenue amounting to Rs244 billion and filed 71 complaints under Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2010 where more than Rs62 billion were involved. The directorate General also seized 8,754 cartons containing 87,540,000 cigarette sticks during the period of July 2020 to June 2021. FBR has uploaded the return forms for tax year-2020 on 1st July, 2021 in the beginning of the financial year which is a great achievement. The process of issuance of manual Income tax refunds has been automated through establishment of (CITRO) which allows from verification of claims to transfer of amount in a taxpayer’s bank account without interference of tax machinery. Prior to the creation of CITRO the whole process of issuance of refunds was done manually. A new system, FASTER-Plus, an end-to-end automated processing and payment system without human intervention to ensure transparency is now in place. All the sales tax refunds are now directly paid in the IBAN of the respective refund claimants within 72 hours and the claimants can view the status of their refund claims on the dashboard of the web portal and on their registered mobiles through SMS Service.