ISLAMABAD (January 03 2003) : At the time when Central Board of Revenue (CBR) announced certain concessions to the commercial exporters, the tax authorities have made it mandatory for the customs officials to communicate full details of goods imported along with refund to the collectorates of Sales Tax to make the system foolproof.
A CBR official told Business Recorder on Thursday night that the collectorates of Customs are empowered to sanction refund of sales tax as per procedure given in the Sales Tax General Order (STGO) No 4 of September 1, 2000.
However, there is no procedure prescribed to ensure that the refund claimant revises his sales tax return and makes corresponding entries in sales tax records to reduce the input tax to the extent he got refund of sales tax from the respective Customs collectorate.
To check the leakage of revenue through wrong refund claims, the collectors of customs must furnish details of sanction of refund for the sales tax authorities.
The information should contain name and address of importer, bill of entry, cash number with the date and the amount of refund allowed along with cheque number with date.
The procedure would ensure that at the time of audit, the amount of sales tax refunded had been duly mentioned in the sales tax records and the sale tax return in the following month had been revised accordingly.
