The Federal government has constituted a dispute resolution committee to remove genuine hardships of businessmen relating to sales tax.
The Karachi committee, headed by Shabbar Zaidi a prominent chartered accountant, comprises of Moin Fudda, Wajid Jawwad, Rais Ashraf Tar Mohammad and Feroze Rizvi.
The committee, set up under Section 47-A of the Sales Tax Act, held its first meeting here.
The member, Legal, Central Board of Revenue (CBR), represented the CBR at the meeting, which heard the complaints of retailers registered with the Sales Tax Department.
The committee recommended that the retailers, paying sales tax, should be given the benefit of input adjustment.
The decision of the committee was transmitted to the CBR for implementation.
According to the term of reference of the committee, the CBR would refer cases of genuine hardship, faced by the businessmen in interpretation of various sales tax rules or any procedural lapses as well as any grievances against the sales tax collectorates such as delay in refund etc.
The committee has three members from the private sector and two from the CBR.
The private sector dominance in the dispute resolution committee is to instil a confidence in the business community that their viewpoint would be given equal weight and verdict would not be always in the favour of the department.
Similar committees have also been constituted in Lahore and Islamabad.
A permanent body with private sector dominance has been set up to resolve hardships of the taxpayers after the successful experiment of the CBR for constituting temporary dispute resolution committees confined to a particular sector and headed by a prominent figure of the same trade.
The Chairman of the Karachi committee, Shabbar Zaidi, has appealed to the businessmen to send their hardship cases relating to sales tax to the committee through the CBR to get these resolved in a transparent manner.
