Karachi: FBR implements strategy to track property transactions in DHA

[Naveed Yaseen]

SOHAIL SARFRAZ
ISLAMABAD (October 08 2009): The Federal Board of Revenue has found that owners of over and above 6,000 properties in Karachi alone are out of the tax net for which an enforcement strategy has been implemented to register owners of property. It is learnt here on Wednesday that around 4,000 buyers have purchased properties in rest of the country from July 2009 onwards.

Out of 4,000 property transactions, around 2,000 are not in the tax net. If 6,000 properties of Karachi are included in the 2,000 figure, approximately 8,000 properties are out of the tax net across the country. Sources told Business Recorder that the FBR is intended to install a computerised system at 129 offices of provincial/district registrars of property for recording property transactions and accurate calculation of capital value tax (CVT) on property.

The FBR is also planning to install the CVT system at banks to issue computerised payment receipts and documentation of the property transactions. The computerised system would feed data and automatically calculate CVT based on the size of the plots. It is important to note that hundreds of housing societies are operating across the country. These housing societies would also be linked with the CVT computer system for monitoring and registration purposes.

There are 25 registrars of property at Karachi including one Defence Housing Authority (DHA). The FBR pilot project for installation of the CVT computerised system at the property offices including DHA was successful. In this regard, computers have been installed at the property offices in Karachi.

During pilot project, it has been confirmed that more than 6,000 property owners have neither obtained the National Tax Numbers (NTNs) nor filing their income tax returns. The FBR has developed a system to generate computerised notices to such owners of property operating out of the tax net.

In almost all the Regional Tax Offices (RTOs), the automatic calculation of CVT system is in place, which operates through the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) and the same is being used by the registration authorities. The same facility is being installed at the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).

Besides automatic calculation of the CVT, the system has the ability to identify NTN holders and non-NTN holders. When asked about techniques used to split property to evade CVT, sources said that it is not easy to split the size of any plot.

For this purpose, they have to first obtain permission from the relevant provincial registration authorities, which is not an easy task. The fee for splitting bigger size of plot into two for avoiding CVT could be higher than the amount of CVT involved. However, sources admitted that the doubling of CVT on immovable property has encouraged people to avoid payment of the levy.

Other measures to broaden the tax base included utilisation of data from 28 motor vehicles registration authorities across the country. Sources said that the analysis of withholding statements has detected Rs 0.19 million business transactions, which are out of the tax net. The notices have been issued to such non-compliant taxpayers under Income Tax Ordinance 2001.

The database of the FBR has now been fully utilised with the help of Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (Pral). The information from big hospitals and medical centers, clubs, airports and other sources of information have been used to bring potential taxpayers into the tax net. The Pral data has been given to the RTOs under the enforcement plan. It has been advised to the taxpayers to accurately declare their income, which would become difficult to conceal due to authentic database maintained by the FBR. Referring to the kiosks and tax facilitation centres (TFCs).

http://www.brecorder.com/index.php?id=969329