ISLAMABAD: The newly introduced sales tax automation system will help generate additional billions of rupees for the national exchequer, besides ensuring transparency, discipline and proper monitoring of sales and purchase all across the country, a top tax official said Wednesday.

The Sales Tax Real-Time Invoice Verification Strive System has been put in place to check leakages in the system and improve overall revenue collections, Member Sales Tax Mohmmad Irshad told APP.

He said the purpose of the system is to check under-invoicing as well as flying invoicing which has been causing damages of billions of rupees to the government in terms of tax evasion.

Although the system has been put in place since the commencement of the current fiscal year, the actual impact could be evaluated after August 18 when the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) receives returns from the sales taxpayers.

“We expect that with the help of this system, additional Rs40 to Rs50 billion per annum revenue could be collected by checking and removing the loopholes and leakages,” he added.

As per the system, all the companies and individuals involved in selling of goods would be bound to submit electronically their invoices of previous month to the FBR by 10th of next month and later file their returns by 18th of that month.

This practice would help FBR to recheck and re-examine the tax collection when the invoices and actual files are submitted, hence it would not only help check the bottlenecks in the tax collection system but would also make the overall system transparent.

He said since the system is in place since July 1 the sales taxpayers are bound to submit their invoices (annexes) by 10th of August and file their returns by August 18. The board would then make cross-check to ensure that no under-voicing and flying invoicing has been included for the purpose of tax evasion, he told APP.

He said FBR has been facing such problems for a long time and it was after long consideration that this software has been developed to overcome the problems.

He said before launching the software, the FBR launched a pilot project and approached businessmen and chambers to inform them and create awareness among them regarding the system.

The tax official said similar systems have been developed to check sales tax evasion by vendors and electricity distribution companies all across the country. In future two more software are being developed to introduce the same facility in the real estate business and motor registration system.

He said the Federal Board of Revenue has taken many incentives to revamp the existing sales tax system to facilitate taxpayers and also improve revenue collection system by making it taxpayer friendly, transparent and disciplined.