ISLAMABAD (April 15 2003) : The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) has decided to allocate National Tax Numbers (NTNs) to all those taxpayers, who have not mentioned NTNs on their income tax returns.
The CBR has laid down fresh procedure for the Regional Commissioners of Income Tax (RCITs) for the speedy issuance of NTN.
Under the new procedure, Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL) would scan all the income tax returns to point out cases where NTNs were not mentioned.
On the basis of data available on these returns, NTNs will be allocated.
PRAL will convey the list of newly allocated NTNs to Zonal Commissioners for record purposes and taxpayers would also be informed of their new NTNs.
However, NTN certificates would be issued to taxpayers upon filing of their NTN applications with PRAL, along with the payment of prescribed fee of Rs 50.
As far as the returns with insufficient data are concerned, PRAL will report these cases to income tax circle officers for obtaining the relevant information.
For new taxpayers, the Zonal Commissioners would get the NTNs allocated by PRAL, prior to issuance of any statutory notice to the taxpayers.
The CBR and PRAL have mutually agreed to adopt the following procedure for the identification of income tax zones and circles of the NTNs already issued and those to be issued in future.
The NTN centre would update the Zones/Circles from the returns filed for the assessment year 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 available on computer system at Data Processing Centress (DPC) in Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi.
After the completion of exercise, the city-wise list of the remaining NTNs would be generated by NTN Centre, Islamabad.
