Revenue spies to detect tax offences countrywide

All the income tax offices are getting armed with intelligence and investigation cell for the first time to deal with critical tax-related cases and detect tax-dodging offences through intensive scrutiny.
Officials said a total of 31 field-level income tax zones across the country recently got down to doing spadework for the formation of the cells as per instructions from the National Board of Revenue (NBR).
The local tax moles will work on respective taxpayers under the tax zones while the Central Intelligence Cell (CIC) will look into broad aspects of tax evasion, they said about the latest measure, aimed at plugging possible holes in the tax net and help augment government's revenue income.
Currently, Customs and Value Added Tax (VAT) departments have their separate intelligence and investigation directorate. The income-tax unit has none.
CIC mainly carries out the income tax-related investigations along with cases of the other two wings.   
Field-level tax offices are following a prescribed guideline of the NBR for the formation of the investigation cells.
"Each of the cells of the tax zones will conduct investigation into at least four tax-evasion cases a month," it is stated in their work plan.
NBR's Large Taxpayers Unit (LTU) recently sent its work plan to the board after the formation of the intelligence and investigation wing for large taxpayers under the unit.
The LTU has formed a six-member team, led by additional tax commissioner Md Khairul Alam, for supervising operation of the intelligence and investigation cell. The Unit mainly monitors corporate tax payment by commercial banks, mobile-phone companies and other large taxpayers.
Already, the unit has finalised an action plan that includes holding a meeting every two weeks to decide on investigating tax-evasion tips, preparing investigation reports, finalising tax demand etc.
The cell has been vested with the power to scrutinise bank accounts of any of the taxpayers following the Income Tax Ordinance 1984 with approval from the tax commissioner.
In the regular meeting, the cell will finalise investigation report on tax-dodging cases and submit it to the high-ups.
The cell can investigate the information received in written form, verbal, via telephone or other forms of allegations. However, the cell will have to obtain approval in writing from the tax commissioner concerned.    
The team of the investigation cell can check the tax files of other tax zones, too, if needed.
The tax authority hopes said the new initiative would help the taxmen find out the critical tax evasion cases through group study of the tax returns.
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