The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has decided to select over 50,000 income tax cases of the tax year 2019 for audit, reflecting an extraordinary increase of 36,000 cases as compared to more than 14,000 cases it had picked for the tax year 2018.

The FBR will make a formal announcement of the selection of over 50,000 cases for audit after computer balloting during November 2021.

The policy of making a major increase in the number of cases for audit is to create an environment of enforcement, compliance, and deterrence among the taxpayer community to make correct declarations, according to report published in ProPakistani.pk.

When asked about the FBR’s capacity to conduct such a huge number of cases for audit in one go, officials said all these cases would be outsourced to the chartered account firms and external auditors. They added that these audits would not be conducted by the FBR’s Inland Revenue officials in the field formations. Therefore, the officials asserted, the FBR was confident that the audits would get completed as per the timelines given by the FBR.

It is to note here that the FBR had selected 14,154 cases of income tax, sales tax, and federal excise duty (FED) for audit through electronic balloting for the tax year 2018. Through the risk-based selection of cases for audit, the FBR had selected 477,374 income taxpayers for balloting, out of which 10,982 or 2.3% cases were selected for audit. Likewise, out of 124,004 or 2.5% sales tax cases, 3,116 cases were selected through balloting, whereas out of 725 cases of FED, the FBR had selected 56 cases for audit.