FBR appoints high-powered team in ECP to verify tax details

Islamabad : The FBR has nominated a high-powered team for establishment of Scrutiny Cell in Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for verifying tax details of thousands of contesting candidates for upcoming general elections 2018 but the ECP must seek ‘meaningful information’ to testify candidates on account of tax default, fraud/evasions in compliance with article 62 and 63 of 1973 Constitution.

Instead of getting mere details of declared income and paid taxes of last three years, the ECP should seek information from the FBR regarding tax default, evasion of duty/ taxes or fraud committed by anyone who will be contesting the next general elections. It will be quite crucial for the ECP to enforce article 62 and 63 when former premier Nawaz Sharif was disqualified by the top court of the country on the basis of getting Iqama.

The ECP has moved ahead for writing letters to all relevant departments including the Federal Board of Revenue, State Bank of Pakistan, Federal Investigation Agency, Security and Exchange Commission of Pakistan and Nadra for nominating their respective focal persons for Scrutiny Cell of the ECP. “After getting nominations from relevant departments, the ECP held its maiden session of IT experts here on Wednesday in order to devise electronic format on which the subordinate departments will share required and relevant information with centralised Scrutiny Cell established into the ECP,” said the official sources and added that the demonstration of the presentation could not be done because of power failure exactly at time of this official meeting.

In the last general elections held in 2013, the Scrutiny Cell of the ECP had scrutinized around 24,000 candidates on eve of elections but the agreed format of seeking information from the FBR was limited to only getting on the basis of constituency, CNIC number, name of contesting candidate, father name, National Tax Number (NTN), date of issuance of NTN, respective RTO, summary of filed returns of last three years in terms of declaring income and tax paid.

This format lacked the required information because if the ECP was going to accept declared income and paid taxes and did not bother to analyze cleared tax demand against the contesting candidates or seek information about under filing or non-declaration of income then it could not be termed it as “meaningful information” in order to comply with article 62 and 63 of 1973 Constitution.

The law of whistleblower becomes relevant on occasion of scrutiny of assets for holding the next general elections. However, the question arises why the FBR has not yet issued rules to make whistleblower law effective. If any contesting candidate declared his assets wrongly belonging to any far flung area of the country, the FBR should take steps to make this law effective in the country.

The FBR sources said that the ECP should give reasonable timeframe for scrutinising the tax details because bulk of details comes from the ECP in two weeks where they required replying back after verifying documents within the limited deadline.

According to office order issued by the FBR, the FBR has nominated eight-member team belonging to the officers of Inland Revenues (IR) as focal persons to assist the Scrutiny Facilitation Cell of Election Commission.

All Chief Commissioners-IR are directed to nominate a Commissioner (BS-20) officer as a focal person with respect to their RTOs/LTUs to keep liaison with Mohammad Tanvir Akhtar Director General (BTB) FBR (HQ) Islamabad regarding this elections exercise.