Islamabad: Advisor to the Prime Minister (PM) on Finance & Revenue Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh on Thursday stated that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and the National Database & Registration Authority (NADRA) would establish a link for data sharing and analytics, a news source reported. He added that both authorities would create a subgroup of members for ensuring that there were no difficulties in the process of sharing data.
Hafeez expressed his views on the matter while chairing the second meeting of the FBR Policy Board. He revealed that the subgroup would comprise Hammad Azhar, Dr Ishrat Hussain, FBR Chairman, NADRA Chairman, and Faiz Kamoka.
According to sources, FBR has so far provided a list of 100,000 CNIC numbers of unregistered persons to NADRA for data enrichment in order to expand the tax base. In this regard, NADRA will perform the task of linking these CNIC numbers with its database covering the family tree and providing all the data to FBR. The board will then conduct further processing for broadening the tax base.
Meanwhile, NADRA has approached the FBR to provide third-party data maintained in the board’s databases. NADRA officials revealed the data would help in creating a mathematical model, data analytics, and facilitate in determining the predictive tax liability of tax evaders and short filers using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology.
On the other hand, FBR Member IT Asim Ahmed said that NADRA could charge a minimal fee as a service provider following its data integration with the board. He added that the exact fee would be decided after signing of the MoU in this regard.
The subgroup of the FBR Tax Policy Board plans to hear both sides in detail for taking a final decision on this matter.
