FBR forms anomaly committee to allay businessmen’s concerns

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has constituted an anomaly committee to identify and remove anomalies in the finance bill 2021/22, in a move to allay concerns of trade and industry that anticipates negative impact of budgetary measures on the economic recovery, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The FBR is expected to rectify its mistakes if committed in the budget for 2021/22 related to any sector of the economy following the recommendations of the anomaly committee, they said.

There are some guiding principles that if any sector’s finished product or raw material is imposed general sales tax at a standard rate of 17 percent then the same product produced in the local market should also be provided the same treatment. Through tax incentives or taxation measures, there should be level playing field and for imports the concept of cascading should be adopted.

Various sectors representatives appeared before the senate standing committee on finance in last few days and many of them were referred to the anomaly committee by the its chairman senator Taleh Mehmood with this advice that if anomaly committee could not “resolve your issue then the senate committee would be ready to hear your genuine concerns by doing utmost efforts to solve them”.

Senate body has already criticised the measures announced in the budget.

FBR constituted anomaly committee-technical and anomaly committee-business in order to identify and remove the technical and legal anomalies in the Finance Bill 2021.

The anomaly committee-technical will be chaired by Naeem Akhtar Sheikh, UHY Hassan Naeem & Co. whereas the co-chairmen of the anomaly committee-technical will be Muhammad Tarique, Member (IR-Policy) and Hamid Ali, Member (Customs-Policy), FBR. The other members of the committee are Ashfaq Tola, Qadir Memon, Patron Pakistan Tax Bar Karachi, Yawar Ali, chairman of Pakistan Business Council, Shahzad Hussain, ex-partner AF Ferguson & Co., Khurram Mukhtar, patron-in-chief Pakistan Textile Exporters Association, Sadia Nazeer, partner KPMG, Hafiz Muhammad Idrees, advocate Supreme Court ex-president tax bar, Habib Fakhruddin and Wahab Kodvavi.

Similarly, anomaly committee-business will be chaired by Sultan Ali Allana, chairman HBL whereas the co-chairmen of the anomaly committee-business will be Muhammad Tarique, Member (IR-Policy) and Hamid Ali, Member (Customs-Policy), FBR.

The other members of the committee are Ehsan Malik, CEO Pakistan Business Council, Shariq Vohra President KCCI, Irfan Siddiqui president Overseas Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Sherbaz Ilyas Ghazanfar Bilour, president Sarhad Chamber, Abdul Samad, president Quetta Chamber, Nasir Hyatt, president Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Tariq Misbah, president Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Adil Bashir chairman All Pakistan Textile Mills Association, Asif Peer, president American Business Council, Asad Shah, director External Affairs PTC and Amir Waheed ex-president Islamabad Chamber.

The terms of reference of the committees will be to review the identified and submitted anomalies and to advise FBR on removal of anomalies. Technical and business anomalies can be submitted on or before close of office hours on June 22 to the co-chairmen, anomaly committees.