Federal Board of Revenue held three-day International Conference on Digitalization of Taxes in Pakistan at FBR Headquarters in collaboration with United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific (UN-ESCAP).
Syed Nadeem Hussain Rizvi, Member Administration, FBR, delivered the inaugural note on behalf of Chairman FBR. He welcomed the participants from multilateral organizations, development sector, public sector organizations, officers of FBR and probationary officers of Inland Revenue Service Academy, Lahore.
On behalf of UN-ESCAP, Mr. Alberto Isgut, Economic Affairs Officer, UN-ESCAP emphasized the role of Integrated National Financing Networks (INFN) for sustainable development, economic growth, and rapid enhancement in the tax-to-GDP ratio of the developing nations through knowledge sharing between technology experts and tax officials. The INFN emphasizes mobilizing financing for productive investments in recovery and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through improving tax compliance.
Besides Prof. Frank Chan from ESSEC Business School, France, and several domestic participants, the conference is being virtually attended by experts from Australian Tax Office, Financial Directorate Slovak Republic, Federal Ministry of Finance, Austria, and National Tax and Customs Administration, Hungary.
Federal Board of Revenue, keeping pace with the global trends, has embarked on the journey of digitalization for documenting economy by launching four key projects including Track and Trace System (TTS) for production monitoring, Point of Sale (POS) System for real-time reporting of sales invoices by tier-1 integrated retailers, Digital Invoicing to document complete supply chain, and Synchronized Withholding and Payment System (SWAPS) aiming at simultaneous payment of withholding taxes and transfer of withholding payments using the State of Bank of Pakistan’s latest payment gateway, RAAST, built on ISO 20022 banking standard with payment contextualization.
The conference will end on 22nd June, 2023 after carrying out Training Need Assessment of FBR Officers to better prepare them in adoption of technology, data analytics, and economic evaluations.