KARACHI: The Appellate Tribunal Inland Revenue (ATIR) Karachi on Friday granted 30-day stay against the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) who was struggling to recover an amount of Rs 8.3 million from M/s Al-Moazzin Hajj & Umrah Services (Pvt) Ltd through freezing its accounts. The Tribunal ordered the FBR to de-attach all the accounts of the taxpayer immediately.
M/s Al-Moazzin Hajj & Umrah Services approached this Tribunal against unjustified tax collection from the FBR and withdrawal of Rs 2.045 million after freezing its account.
The Tribunal’s Judicial Member (Judge) Muhammad Jawed Zakaria and Account Member Faheemul Haq Khan in their judgement said, “we deem it appropriate to grant stay against recovery of balance amount for 30- day from today or till the decision of main appeal pending before this tribunal.”
The learned counsel advocate M. Waseem Sheikh informed the Tribunal that the Deputy Commissioner Inland Revenue (DCIR) had made various unjustified additions to the income of the Taxpayer and the same were confirmed by the learned CIR (A) without applying judicious mind and no worth mentioning relief was granted by him.
He further contended that against the order of the learned CIR (A), the taxpayer had field appeal before this Tribunal on 10-09-2016 which is pending. In the present case department has raised unjustified demand of above Rs 8.3 million from the taxpayer intentionally ignoring the admitted facts, he said. The impugned order is based upon surmises and conjectures having no legal sanctity, he added.
The learned counsel further contended that order passed by taxation authorities below are unjust and improper and therefore, any coercive action for effecting recovery of assessed amount of tax against the applicant/taxpayer would be equally unjust and improper.
The learned counsel categorically informed the court that FBR has already attached bank account of the applicant and withdrawn an amount of Rs 2.045 million which comes to 24.45 per cent of the total tax demand. The department has attached the bank account of the taxpayer just to harass the taxpayer.
The Tribunal has considered contentions of both the parties and observed that the Tribunal is seized of matter of taxpayer’s appeal and is empowered to hear the same U/S 131 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 and decide the appeal of the applicant, therefore, it has powered to grant interim relief to save the applicant from imminent coercive measures to be initiated by the FBR.