FBR notifies rules to select cases for tax audit

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Thursday notified rules to select cases for sales tax, federal excise duty and income tax audit to nab tax evaders.

The rules, issued through three different statutory regulatory orders (SROs), will help the FBR to identify short filers, nil filers and those who misrepresent their sales and incomes.

According to SRO54, the apex tax collecting body notified several steps to select and conduct audit of sales tax cases. The data of all sales tax returns, filed electronically or manually, will be utilised as a basic data for audit.

The FBR will decide the cases of persons or classes of persons, which are to be excluded from audit selection and such exclusion will be publicised each year through FBR’s website and the data of the remaining cases will be utilised for computer ballot for audit selection.

The whole balloting system for audit selection will be based only on the national tax numbers (NTNs) or computerised national identity cards (CNICs) of the filers. The cases selected for audit will be communicated to regional tax offices (RTOs) concerned, and large taxpayers units (LTUs). The FBR issued through the same SRO detailed procedures for selecting cases for sales tax audit.

Through SRO55, the FBR issued rules to select cases for auditing federal excise cases. The amendments were made in the Federal Excise Rules 2005.

The bureau, through SRO52, has notified draft rules to audit income tax cases. It sought feedback from stakeholders within seven days before finalising the rules.