KARACHI: Bowing to the pressure of the business community the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) withdrew its notifications demanding audit of more than 1,000 industrial units, a senior FBR official said on Saturday.
“The purpose of issuing the annulled notification about conducting audit of 1,076 industrial units was to unveil a paperless fraud of Rs2 billion worth of sales tax refund,” said Muhammad Zahid Khokhar, Director, Intelligence & Investigation, FBR while addressing KCCI on Saturday.
The board has asked few industrial units to submit some invoices, so that it could detect the chain of fraudulent sales tax refunds, the top FBR sleuth said addressing the Karachi Chambers of Commerce and Industry
“But I have personally not seen that notice before its issuance to industries, as I was not in the city,” he said.
The FBR had issued notices to 1,076 industrial units, mostly in the textile industry, demanding them to submit their each and every transaction made in the last six years from 2004 to 2009.
He said that about 102 fake companies, which never existed in the country, were involved in the billion of rupees sales tax refund fraud. “We had issued notices to industries to find out link of the fraudsters, who were believed to have supplied material to industries.”
Responding to a question from participants, he said that his department had unearthed 300 smuggling cases in the last 365 days, which were being run under the banner of Afghan Transit Trade (ATT).
He said that his department had caught such volume of smuggled goods last year, which was equivalent to the volume of goods caught in the last 50 years. “Our warehouses are full of smuggled goods and we are thinking to take more places on rent to store the caught smuggled goods,” he said.
Pakistan Apparel Forum (PAF) Chairman Javed Bilwani said that FBR has each and every record of exporters and there was even no need for providing a couple of invoices of a few industrial units to detect the said fraud.
Source The News
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