The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has decided to re-introduce the system of instant issuance of the BIN.
This comes at odd with the board's earlier stance on verifying the information before the issuance of fresh VAT registration.
Currently VAT officials issue BIN after the verification of information provided in the application. The procedure takes two to three days.
Having instructed from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), the NBR decided to re-introduce the instant BIN issuance and ordered the field-level VAT offices to ease the process.
This is part of the step to improve the country's ranking in the ease of doing business index.
The NBR suspended the instant issuance of BIN in February last after it found a large number of businesses misused the facility and evaded VAT and customs duty taking the advantage of the system. VAT officials found those businesses to have no existence.
The tax collector has decided to take punitive action under Digital Security Act-2018 against those who provide false information.
"Initially, the BIN should be issued online. Later, the information provided by the BIN applicants and existence of the businesses should be verified though physical inspection within the shortest possible time," according to the revenue board's instruction.
To stem fake registration, the online VAT registration application web portal should have an alert: Providing any wrong information in BIN application is a punishable offence.
The NBR also instructed the VAT online office to take necessary steps to implement the decision through media campaign.
The VAT officials will have to take legal action against the fake BIN holders, realise the evaded VAT, if applicable, and suspend the VAT registration, if necessary.
However, the recent decision makes some field-level VAT officials worried as they are already burdened with a large number of fake BIN holders.
The NBR issued online some 163,000 electronic Business Identification Numbers (e-BINs) instantly and officials suspected that almost half of which would be fake.
A senior VAT official, preferring anonymity, said it is a difficult job for VAT officials clean up the garbage of huge fake BINs.
"Rather we prefer limiting the scope for false information providers through verification of the information prior issuance of BIN," he said.
He said the BINs should be issued following consent of the commissioner concerned as per the new VAT and Supplementary Duty (SD) Act-2012.
The NBR launched the online issuance of BIN in March 2017 in an attempt to simplify the VAT registration system.
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