A report published in this newspaper on Tuesday pointed out that wrong tax assessment by revenue officials, who don’t have enough training and expertise, is one of the prime reasons behind the harassment of enthusiastic taxpayers. This situation is also creating obstacles to achieving the government’s revenue earnings targets. Referring to top business leaders, the report also said that there were hundreds of incidents of wrong tax assessment across the county where the disputes were not settled at the commissioner level. For that reason, the businesses had no option but to go to courts for settlement. We are very much surprised how a department like NBR, which is the strongest wing under the ministry of Finance to accelerate revenue earnings, could be so casual in dealing with sensitive matters.Obviously, it is a waste of time and money. The government is also losing a huge amount of revenue every year.
When the government has taken initiatives to digitalise all public organisations and reach services to the grassroots people, such inefficient performance of NBR officials is unacceptable. There are widespread allegations that NBR officials file cases against the businesses with wrong tax assessments on a regular basis. In many cases, the disputes are settled if the business owners agree to deal with the official concerned on a personal level. If not, the cases go to the courts for settlement. There are many reasonable grounds to believe that a section of NBR officials make the wrong assessments purposefully for personal gains. And punish taxpayers for not agreeing to make a settlement with them. The number of genuine taxpayers is small compared to the country’s huge expenditures in different development and non-development sectors.
A section of people dodge the tax authorities by showing income in lesser amounts. In those cases, a section of tax advisers or lawyers allegedly help them to evade taxes. Corporate tax set aside, the amount that the government receives every year from other taxpayers is not significant. In this situation, the government is trying to expand tax-net to collect more revenue. Here, the role of NBR should be much more pragmatic and farsighted. But it is yet not able to train up its officials to tackle the situation. When the size of the development budget is increasing day by day and the economy getting bigger, the NBR will have to gear up its activities to meet the demands of time. The government should give special attention to NBR equipping it with trained officials who have digital expertise so that it could serve the people better.
