ISLAMABAD - The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has appointed Commissioner (HQ) Broadening of Tax Base to issue notices to rich and potential people in a countrywide campaign to broaden the tax net.
The government has planned to bring 500,000 rich people in the tax net during the current financial year 2013-14 on the basis of financial transactions and data collected from Nadra. FBR had the data of rich people who were not on the tax roll and didn’t file tax returns but it did not share it with its field staff to avoid misuse. Therefore, to streamline the process, the FBR has appointed Commissioner (HQ) Broadening of Tax base, Islamabad to issue notices to the potential persons through the centralised system at Board level.
The FBR on Wednesday notified the jurisdiction Commissioner (HQ) Broadening of Tax base, Islamabad and his jurisdiction defined as “All cases of non-filers of Income Tax returns who are potential taxpayers liable to furnish their returns of income and have been identified on the basis of information collected at FBR for broadening of tax base”. 
Sources told that dedicated cell for broadening the tax-base at the FBR House would first issue notices to the un-documented persons. The field formations would not be authorised to send the initial notices to the concerned persons, as the profiles are compiled at the level of the FBR.
“We have identified the rich people by mapping their profiles,” the source added. The tax authorities have decided to dispatch 50,000 notices to potential tax dodgers up to September 30 in order to meet the prior conditions of the IMF for obtaining a $5.3 billion bailout package. “FBR has started to issuing notices to non-taxpayers and 10,000 notices will be served during the ongoing month (July)”, said Riffat Shaheen, Spokesperson of the FBR while talking to The Nation other day. She further said that FBR would issue further 15,000 notices to potential tax dodgers next month (August) and 25,000 in September. Similarly, notices to non-taxpayers would be issued in remaining months of the year, she added.
Government wants to increase the tax to GDP ratio, which is lowest in the region as it is around 8.5 percent. The number of people who file income tax returns fell to less than 800,000 in the tax year 2012 in the country of having around 180 million population.
It is worth mentioning here that FBR has to collect mammoth revenue collection target of Rs 2475 billion, which need growth of 27 percent than the collection of previous year’s collection of Rs 1942 billion. Therefore, FBR is working to increase the country’s tax base by bringing non-taxpayers into the tax net.