FAISALABAD: Blacklisted firms have no barrier to resume same business with new names as the Federal Board of Revenue lacks biometric system for registration of sales tax and its field officials are not conducting post-blacklisting audit of tax-dodging firms, sources told Dawn.

This has been detected by the Directorate of the Intelligence and Investigation, Inland Revenue, of the Federal Board of Revenue, Faisalabad office.

Source told Dawn officials of the department, during investigation of different tax fraud cases registered with the directorate, had found that a large number of registered units (registered persons) had been blacklisted after tax fraud.

However, no further proceedings were initiated against them under the Sales Tax Act 1990.

Quoting examples of such units, sources said a man `N’ got registered a packaging firm using a fake CNIC and committed a sales tax fraud of Rs 4.9I million. The CNIC was blocked by Nadra when the issue was brought into its notice.

After blacklisting of the firm, the same man got registered another packaging unit by using another fake CNIC.

Through this unit, `N’ had also committed a tax fraud of Rs 21 million. This CNIC was also blocked. The accused did not stop here as he went with the registration of third unit through his CNIC. This time he inflicted a loss of Rs 30.4 million by evading sales tax.

With the help of fake registrations, the fraud amount of all three units is Rs 55.6 million.

An officer told Dawn that `N’ with the help of other such units had committed a huge tax fraud and might be still doing the business with some other name.

To check the status of the blacklisted firms, he said the directorate had detected that as many as 788 registered units had been blacklisted u/s 21(2) of Sales Tax Act 1990.

The officer said government must launch biometric system for registration of the sales tax that would help control elements evading millions of rupees tax.

Talking to Dawn, Mohammad Azam, director of intelligence, FBR, Faisalabad, said they were actively working on the units involved in tax fraud, particularly in the packages sector.

He said some units had been blacklisted by the directorate recently and accused had also been arrested.

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2015

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