KARACHI: Government of Pakistan has received grant from World Bank for strengthening of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) capacity in information technology and fiscal research and tax policy analysis.
World Bank has agreed to provide the Government of Pakistan under the Tax Accelerating Growth and Reforms (TAGR) Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) Grant for Strengthening the Tax Systems and Building the Tax Policy Analysis Capacity of FBR Officers.
The FBR intends to hire consultants for Market Monitoring and Intervention (MMI) and Tax Intelligence Unit (TIU) for conducting the fiscal research and tax policy analysis of FBR operations.
These two units will be working at FBR Headquarters to determine the market factors and will suggest how tax collection can be improved.
FBR requires Director MMI and Economist MMI to conduct sector specific studies to work on industrial documentation and benchmarking & highlight the variances whereas the Director TIU and Economist TIU are required to study emerging tax evasion patterns and recommend the innovative ways to curb tax evasion.
Tax Intelligence Unit (TIU) will also be establishing link between the FBR’s HR and Operations as how the organizational efficiency can achieve the objective of enhanced revenue mobilization.
Market Monitoring and Intervention (MMI) will be responsible for identifying growth sectors which are potential revenue spinners and design a matrix of sector/ industry classification based on Tax type and size of all enterprises. MMI would also be suggesting ways for reforming them into performing units (generating taxes) from non functional enterprises (declaring losses).
Tax Intelligence Unit (TIU) will be responsible for conducting research for identification of prevalent tax avoidance and tax evasion patterns. It will examine the factors and policy loopholes which encourages the users/taxpayers to avail such schemes without changing behavioral patterns.
TIU would conduct research the emerging business models (such as Uber) where taxation is a complex phenomena. The impact of such taxations and returns it can bring to tax administration. After studying the offshore evasions and policy interventions for controlling such tax avoidance/evasion, TIU will suggest policy options and amendments in existing fiscal laws.
TIU will also be responsible for developing a robust performance management/measurement system for all FBR operations/processes.
The consultants hired will work at FBR headquarters. The relationship between the consultants and management will be professional.
FBR is not expecting any academic research paper but it expects that at the end of the assignment the consultants come up with precise objective of the study, with concrete suggestions, recommendations, action plan with timeline as how these objectives can be achieved.