Islamabad: On the directions of Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) the Post clearance Audit (PCA) of customs has recovered Rs11.85 million in sales tax revenue during the month of June, 2022.
Earlier it was brought to the notice of the FTO that certain goods were made chargeable to sales tax on the basis of retail price at the time of import by virtue of amendments made in Section 3(2) of the Sales Tax Act, 1990 vide Finance Act, 2019-20. The FBR, in order to give effect to the budgetary changes, issued a Custom General Order through which the Directorate General of Reforms Automation (Customs) was required to make necessary changes in the WeBOC clearance system of customs for charging sales tax on retail price.
FTO observed that the department had not only failed to develop a functional and practical solution to the problem at hand i.e. development of an IT-based module to cater for the budgetary changes with a view to capture and realize the exact amount of due taxes at the import stage on items subjected to tax on retail price vide Finance Act, 2019 but it was also a massive revenue loss.
A report was called by the FTO from the Directorate General of Post Clearance Audit regarding detections made by them in this regard, data revealed that three committees constituted by the FBR failed to perform and complete the assigned task with sincerity of purpose despite the lapse of about three years.
In view of the above, Tax Ombudsman directed FBR to ensure that the DG PCA should constitute a dedicated team under the supervision of Additional Director at each regional Directorate for an in depth audit of this sector and submit monthly progress report of detections made and tax collected till the final deployment of WEBOC module.
As a result, the said teams had been constituted in all the three Regional Directorates of PCA, the audit was being successfully conducted by all the directorates and recovered Rs11.854 million during the month of June 2022. This amount is in addition to the already recovered amount of Rs286.6 million by PCA.
