The automated recordkeeping system in the case of large taxpayers has remained almost dysfunctional for a year for lack of expertise at the National Board of Revenue (NBR).
Officials said the tax administration has got no technical hands to decode data on taxes and large taxpayers since two hired foreign experts left sans technology transfer.
The system, entitled 'Income Tax Management System (ITMS)', which has been in place since the inception of the Large Taxpayers Unit (LTU) in 2004, was considered one of the key systems of a digitised LTU that deals with hefty amounts of taxes.
Officials of the unit said they had used the ITMS, internal database of large taxpayers, over 13 years until December 2016 for analysing data, monitoring revenue trend, and assessing sector-wise tax collection.
The LTU was dependent on two specialised programmers appointed by UK's DFID under a project to operate the system. But they left after expiry of their tenure in December 2016.
The unit could not decipher data from the system as neither the technical know-how was transferred nor were skilled IT officials appointed by the National Board of Revenue (NBR) despite several requisition letters from the LTU.
They said the NBR or the LTU does not have skilled IT programmers capable of operating or decoding the ITMS. The unit, which contributes one-third of the direct taxes to the exchequer, has only one mid-level IT official out of 17 sanctioned posts.
Currently, taxmen face difficulties in analysing sector-wise data for assessing the trend in revenue collection from the large taxpayers.
The system was used to give inputs of pay order, serve notices, find out tax defaulters and assess risk of revenue loss from large taxpayers.
Tax returns from the large taxpayers and other information were digitally maintained in the ITMS with the support of TACTS project funded by the British Department for International Development (DFID).
A senior LTU official said the ITMS system was started under RIRA (Reforms in Revenue Administration) in 2002 and continued with the subsequent five-year TACTS project.
The TACTS (Tax Administration Capacity and Taxpayers Services) project started in October 2010 and was reviewed in 2013. The project tenure expired in September 2015. But, the two programmers continued to support the ITMS system at the request of the LTU and fund support from the DFID. The programmers left on January 17, 2016.
"It was assured that the project-appointed programmers would operate the system," he added.
Currently, a new project styled Bitax only focuses on digitisation of manually submitted tax returns and online-submitted tax returns.
The LTU officials said they had informed the high-ups of the NBR about the matter and requested taking immediate steps for the sake of protecting revenue from large taxpayers.
However, no steps have so far been taken from the NBR to make the system operative.
There are over 418 large corporate taxpayers, including all of the commercial banks, mobile-phone firms and insurance companies that pay bulk taxes under the LTU.
Some of the former tax officials said ITMS was the first automation step about the large taxpayers' tax returns.
The system used to keep the record of the large taxpayers. Taxmen can access those data with a single click to analyse revenue potential and trend in tax payment.
Now, the LTU has to analyse the previous data manually, finding it from each of the tax returns of the large taxpayers. Officials termed it a troublesome-and time-consuming task.
The officials said even large taxpayers also used to get support of the ITMS system to know their actual tax liabilities.
The LTU started off in 2003 to run the tax management under functional systems. It has four functional wings -- taxpayers' wing, revenue-accounting wing, tax collection and enforcement/appeal wing, and audit wing.
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