ISLAMABAD    -   Dr Asif Mahmood Jah, Federal Tax Om­budsman (FTO), Friday said that FTO re­ceived about 3000 complaints from Janu­ary 2022 to June 2022, out of which 2650 complaints were addressed.

He along with his team visited Islam­abad Chamber of Com­merce & Indus­try (ICCI) and gave a presentation to the business community about the 6 months achievements of his organization. Dr. Ar­slan Subuctageen, Advisor (Customs), Ms Sarwat Tahira Habib, Advisor (Media & Awareness), and Almas Ali Jovindah, Ad­visor Legal FTO, accompanied him at the occasion.

Addressing the business community, he said that the complaints redressal time has been reduced from 68 to 40 days while 75 suo motu cases were taken up during the 6-month period. He said that on the orders of FTO, customs au­thorities collected over Rs.5 billion by auctioning pending vehicles and goods. Similarly, on the intervention of FTO, FBR cleared refunds of about Rs.8 billion of taxpayers. He said that FTO has set up 5 new regional offices to expand its net­work for the facilitation of taxpayers. He assured that FTO would continue to act as an advocate of taxpayers to address their grievances and stressed that the business community should take benefit of its services for redressal of their tax complaints. He also nominated Ms. Nai­ma Ansari, President, Islamabad Women Chamber of Commerce & Industry as Honorary Business Coordinator of FTO and presented a nomination letter to her at the occasion.

Speaking at the occasion, Muham­mad Shakeel Munir, President, Islam­abad Chamber of Commerce & Industry lauded the 6 month achievements of FTO that showed its good performance and said that FTO was providing speedy jus­tice to the taxpayers by addressing their tax complaints, which deserved great appreciation. He said that FTO’s model of public private partnership by nomi­nating Honorary Business Coordinators from the private sector was making a good contribution towards solving the grievances of taxpayers. He said that the current tax system of Pakistan was quite complicated and stressed that the gov­ernment should make tax reforms to de­velop a tax system that should facilitate the promotion of business and invest­ment activities, which would ultimately increase the tax revenue of the country.

Muhammad Faheem Khan, Vice Presi­dent and Khalid Iqbal Malik, former President, Islamabad Chamber of Com­merce & Industry also lauded the role of FTO for providing speedy and free of cost justice to the taxpayer and added that FTO’s interventions were improv­ing the confidence of taxpayers on its facilitative role.