FBR officials have been giving technical briefings to journalists at FBR headquarters in the past when the budget is presented.
Islamabad: The federal government has not only vastly increased the powers of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) through the Finance Bill in the federal budget for the next fiscal year, but it has also been revealed that the FBR has been prevented from giving technical briefings on the Finance Bill to avoid possible criticism due to amendments in tax laws and hidden taxation and to hide the facts from the public.
According to the news, for some time now, FBR officials have been giving technical briefings to journalists about the Finance Bill at the FBR headquarters when the federal budget is presented in parliament.
At the headquarters, FBR officials used to inform about the benefits to taxpayers from the budget measures and the details of the additional revenue received by the FBR.
FBR officials used to clear the ambiguities found in the Finance Bill and explain the measures taken related to taxation and the amendments made in the tax laws through the Finance Bill, but this time this was not done.
When contacted, a senior FBR officer said that this time the government had prohibited this from happening, due to which a technical briefing for the media was not held in the FBR.
