KARACHI: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday announced that the government has appointed Chartered Accountant and tax affairs expert Syed Shabbar Zaidi as Chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).
The prime minister was talking to a select group of senior journalists at Prime Minister’s Office. Zaidi’s appointment comes days after the removal of Jahanzeb Khan as FBR chief. No official notification has been issued in this regard as yet.[the_ad id=”32940″]
However, sources said names of three officers of Pakistan Customs Service (PCS) along with Shabbar Zaidi’s have been forwarded, of which one will be the new Chairman of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).
The Federal Cabinet will finalize one of these to be the new chief of the revenue body at its meeting on Tuesday.[the_ad id=”31605″]The three officers of Pakistan Customs Service include Fazal Yazdani (13th CTP), Jawaid Ghani (14th CTP) and Ahmed Mujtaba Memon (15th CTP).
An official said as per the seniority and competence and reputation, Fazal Yazdani is the likely new Chairman of FBR.
An official said that it was a very good decision to have a PCS officer heading the revenue body, as these officers know the Customs as well as Sales Tax. It may be mentioned here that Customs department used to look after sales tax until the Inland Revenue was formed.
Official said the performance of Inland Revenue was not good and they mostly relied on indirect taxes.
Earlier a Customs officer used to be posted at all private bonds, public bonds and manufacturing bonds, which duly collected the sales tax. However, Nawaz Sharif in 1995 removed all these officers and sales tax is collected since then on voluntary declaration basis.
The official said appointment of PCS officer as chairman FBR would help increase revenue collection as well as performance of Inland Revenue.