Issuance of STRNs: GPS, GSM to be used to verify business premises The Federal Board of Revenue will use technologies of Global Positioning System (GPS) and GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) for verification of business premises of units intend to obtain new Sales Tax Registration Numbers (STRNs). Sources told Business Recorder here on Monday that both the technologies, ie, GPS and GSM would be used to ensure issuance of STRNs to genuine applicants. Moreover, the cleansing of existing sales tax data base would also be done under the new sales tax registration system. The data cleansing of sales tax has already been started at Lahore. The FBR is in the process of issuing new sales tax registration system, replacing the existing procedure of Central Registration Office (CRO). The FBR will use both the technologies for physical verification of the business premises under the new rules to be notified for new sales tax registration system. The purpose of the whole new system is to introduce some kind of secure mechanism to issue STRNs only to verified business premises, which could be monitored in future. Under the proposed system, the concerned Commissioner would approve registration of new applicant and system would approve registrations for issuance of the certificates instead of CROs. The commodity codes or HS codes would be applied for specific items to check whether registered persons are also dealing in the specific raw materials and inputs to avoid frauds. In this way, the verification of business premises of the new applicants would be done through GPS enabling device using application with business activity code. Sources said the Computerised Risk-Based Evaluation of Sales Tax (CREST) domain team of the FBR has successfully started running the pilot project at Lahore. The pilot has been launched in Lahore for cleansing of existing data. According to the new procedure, the new application received in central registration office or local registration office will be processed in accordance with risk parameters being finalised by the Board. Though with zero risk, the new registrations shall be allowed by the concerned Commissioner subsequent to GSM verification and STRN certificate issuance by the 'Reg-Sys System'. For others medium risk the verification and documents prescribed in the rules shall be after GSM verification and after the prescribed documents the Commissioner shall allow the registration and transmit the data to Reg-Sys for issuance of certificate. In cases of risky applicant the GIS/GPS verification would be done by the concerned AC/DC with detail documents registration or rejection by Commissioner and certificate to be issued by the Reg-Sys. The Reg-Sys shall have a direct link with the expeditious refund system (ERS) system as well as with WeBoc. The Customs clearance would be done on subsequent verification from sales tax registration data status from 'Reg-Sys'. The benefits of new system revealed that the centralised single source of information would be managed through a unified application. The physical location verified through GIS/GPS system making it possible to track the location co-ordinates, geospatial images, population density of different types of units on map. The Risk based verification of registration application and particulars changes on scale of dynamic risk factors mitigating the fraud risk. Storing the documents physically after scanning into the database, making it available for usage against post registration transactions. Decentralising approval mechanism would be introduced at commissioners' level for speedy processing and correction of description of goods that will help in revenue analysis, accurate forecasting estimates and budget analysis, stopping invoice misuse to irrelevant sectors.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 05:52:05 +0000
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