Raza Kazmi
ISLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has uploaded the Active Taxpayers List (ATL) for Tax Year-2020 on 1st March, 2021. The ATL is available on the official website of FBR. Number of Income Tax Returns for Tax Year-2020 had reached 2.62 million on 28th February, 2021 as compared to 2.43 million for Tax Year-2019 as on 28th February, 2020. The amount of tax paid with returns for Tax Year-2020 at Rs. 49.6 billion is 60 % more than tax paid with returns for Tax Year-2019 up to 28th February, 2020.
FBR has added that 509,039 filers have not been included in this year’s ATL as they could not file their tax returns within due date or the date extended by the respective commissioners and ATL surcharge had not been paid by them. FBR has clarified that such taxpayers can get themselves automatically included in the ATL if they pay the necessary ATL surcharge. The amount of ATL surcharge for companies is Rs. 20,000, Association of Persons Rs. 10,000 and ATL surcharge for individuals is Rs. 1000. FBR encourages such taxpayers to pay respective amount of ATL surcharge and take benefits of ATL.
Similarly, those taxpayers who could not file their returns for Tax Year-2020 till now, are also urged to avail benefit of ATL by filing their returns along with ATL surcharge.
TLTP adds: Meanwhile, the Directorate General of Intelligence and Investigation (I&I) of Inland Revenue has been empowered to gather information about suspicious financial transactions, including investment and expenses.
The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Tuesday issued SRO 272(I)/2021 to authorise the directorate for making various activities to identify income tax evasion. The functions of the Directorate-General of Intelligence and Investigation, Inland Revenue shall be:
To carry out intelligence activities, access and verification of business premises, access to record/documents or system maintained therein, intelligence gathering on all tax related issues including under-reporting, tax evasion and revenue leakages.
To collect information/record/documents from any person including taxpayer and third party-relating to financial transactions like investment and expenses, etc, and details of persons who are involved in such activities.
To process information and take necessary action on the basis of information provided by any other organization, agency or department under the relevant provisions of Income Tax Ordinance, 2001.
To utilise the information obtained through establishment of linkages by the FBR with all major national, provincial other databases to collect relevant information.
To identify cases of income tax evasion and carry out inquiry, investigation, whichever is deemed fit, to retrieve the loss of revenue; to identify, investigate and prosecute cases of tax evasion and/or offences punishable under the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 and the rules made thereunder.
To share and disseminate actionable information and corroborating evidence, where required, through written reports or information reports or otherwise to authorities or officers in the headquarters and field formations of the FBR for further proceedings.
To process, investigate and prosecute complaints of tax evasion, to process, investigate and prosecute information shared by other agencies and to carry out any other work or function that may be assigned to it by the FBR. – TLTP
