ISLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) will conduct nation-wide survey of immovable properties to assess and tap colossal wealth parked in the real estate sector.
The decision has been taken and approved at a meeting under the chairmanship of the prime minister held last month.
According to minutes of the meeting it has been decided to conduct nation-wide survey of immovable property to assess and tap colossal wealth parked in the real-estate sector.
The survey would be conducted along with geo-tagging within next two years.
It has been considered that Chinese proposal for conducting digitized land survey (digital cartography) of entire country is pending for the last two years.
Proposal for proof of concept of digital survey of Islamabad industrial area (1-9) along with geo-tagging option is already under consideration with FBR.
Proposal of digital nation-wide survey has been approved in principal. Further the digital survey of Islamabad Industrial Area (1-9) with geo-tagging would be undertaken at priority.
It is also decided that nation-wide survey would be undertaken and completed over the next two years while taking Chinese proposal in consideration.
The meeting also considered proposal of nation-wide tax assessment and documentation drive to effectively check tax evasion and ensure documentation of economy.
The documentation drive needs to be undertaken over the next two to three years. The documentation drive will assist in ascertaining untapped segments including businesses, real-estate and industries.
Therefore, it is decided that a comprehensive proposal for nation-wide tax assessment and documentation drive (undertaken over two years) would be formulated.
It is also decided that tax reforms must not create choking effect for the economy. And correct taxation measures would be taken with prompt implementation instead of entanglement in extended impasses.
The meeting discussed the actualization of tax advisory board to alleviate trust deficit, preparation of objective tax policies and improve taxpayers’ awareness.
The tax advisory board (as amended in FBR Act, 2007) needs to be actualized at the ministry of finance (Revenue Division) as formal feedback mechanism for policy level advice on taxation issues.
This will effectively separate tax policy and tax administration functions whereby FBR to act as revenue collection agency only.
In this regard, it is decided that tax advisory board should be actualized immediately to discuss threadbare all taxation policies relieving FBR from additional burden of tax policy formulation.
