ISLAMABAD-Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and National Data and Registration Authority (Nadra) on Wednesday has signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to automate tax collection system to facilitate the taxpayers.
In line with the vision of the Prime Minister to automate tax collection system to facilitate the taxpayers, Federal Board of Revenue under the guidance of Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Revenue, has signed MoU with NADRA for real-time verification of CNICs and associated details. Linking NADRA and FBR systems will help improve FBR’s service delivery standards for taxpayers as it will help to automate tax refunds pre-fill data in withholding statements and tax returns. It will also promote ease of doing business by saving time spent in regulatory compliance. In addition, this data linkage will facilitate onward linking of FBR’s system with other organizations. This has a huge potential for identification of persons who are either outside the tax net or conceal their income and assets.
The government is working on various options to broaden the narrow tax base of the country. An official said that there are 3.3 million NTN holders who do not file their tax returns. There is data of WHT taxpayers who are not coming into the tax net. The government has therefore decided to expand the narrow tax base to bring many more into the tax net, he added.
It is worth mentioning here that in September 2020, the FBR policy board had stressed on the need to establish a link between NADRA and FBR for data sharing and data analytics. A sub-group of members to point out and sort the difficulties that are hindering the progress on the data sharing issue between the two organisations.
This sub-group consists of Mr. Hammad Azhar, Dr. Ishrat Hussain, Mr.Faiz Kamoka, FBR Chairman and NADRA Chairman; the subgroup was supposed to share its report with the policy board in a week.
Meanwhile, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has launched the Maloomat TaxRayApp to facilitate the taxpayers’ and general public. This Application has been uploaded on the website of FBR. Taxpayers’ and general public can get the information about their assets and withholding deductions through Maloomat TaxRayApp. The information provided by this Application will help the taxpayers’ in filing their annual tax returns correctly.