SLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Monday revoked the clause that made it mandatory for taxmen to warn defaulters 24 hours before freezing their bank accounts, which tax lawyers dubbed as harassment and a dent to ease of doing business.<\/p>\n
Back in the day former FBR chairman Shabbar Zaidi had made it mandatory for the tax collectors to intimate defaulters before suspending their account, keeping the FBR chairperson in loop.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am further directed to state that in order to implement the law in its true spirit and to re-vest the power vested in the institution of the Commissioners viz-a-viz action under Section 140 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001, the instructions referred supra are hereby withdrawn ab-initio,\u201d said Hammad Hussain Jaffri, Secretary Inland Revenue Operations FBR, in an official notification on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe field formations may accordingly exercise the powers vested under SRO 274(1)\/2020 dated April 2nd, 2020 and Section 48 of the Sales Tax Act, 1990 for recovery of outstanding demands. This is issued with the approval of the Chairman, FBR,\u201d the notification added.<\/p>\n
President Karachi Tax Bar Association (KTBA) Muhammad Zeeshan Merchant said it was tantamount to harassment of the people who were already paying taxes. \u201cDo taxpayers have any rights?\u201d<\/p>\n
Merchant said it would only add to the misery of taxpayers. \u201cIt’s very sad. Instead of gaining their confidence, the tax authority is disillusioning the taxpayers,\u201d he added. \u201cFBR again chooses to burden the people who are already in the tax net. Why not go for non-filers and increase the number of people in the tax net?\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industries (KCCI) President Mohammad Idrees said the government had been claiming to improve the ease of doing business but this would increase the concerns of the business community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis move will only reduce the ease of doing business in the country and certainly shatter the trust and confidence of the business community,\u201d the KCCI official said. Talking to The News, former chairman FBR Shabbar Zaidi said he had taken the initiative to reduce the taxpayers\u2019 harassment by the tax officials and was disappointed to see it withdrawn.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am personally sorry to hear the withdrawal of the first instruction issued when I joined as chairman FBR,\u201d said Zaidi. \u201c[There should be] no freezing of bank accounts without intimation and approval from chairman FBR. Due to this there was a major relief to taxpayers. I urge the Prime Minister, Finance Minister, and Chairman FBR to reinstate it [the withdrawn clause]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores et quasnim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[40,41],"class_list":["post-8180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-employment-law","tag-east","tag-europe","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgaglobal.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgaglobal.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgaglobal.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgaglobal.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgaglobal.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8180"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cgaglobal.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11377,"href":"https:\/\/cgaglobal.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8180\/revisions\/11377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgaglobal.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cgaglobal.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgaglobal.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cgaglobal.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}