KATHMANDU, Nov 3: Chief Information Commissioner Binaya Kumar Kasaju on Thursday tagged the fake VAT receipt scam as a serious financial crime and noted that National Information Commission (NIC) pressed the government to make public the names of firms involved in the scam considering the gravity of the issue.
“The scam was nothing less than an act of robbery. Hence, we could not agree with government´s decision to protect their (firms involved in the scam) rights to confidentiality. After all, such rights are provisioned for taxpayers, not tax evaders. Protecting their information would have been wrong interpretation of the law,” Kasaju stated.[break]
Kasaju, who was summoned by the Public Accounts Committee of the parliament, also expressed confidence that the NIC´s decision would not only bolster morale of investigating officers but also support the economy of the country.
Finance Secretary Krishna Hari Baskota, who was strongly against disclosing the names of those involved in evading VAT, too changed his stance before the PAC. “We looked the whole affair from Income Tax Act perspective only, and in the process did not realize we were overlooking public´s rights to information,” he stated.
Baskota briefed the lawmakers that Inland Revenue Department (IRD) and its offices across the country have so far completed investigating 372 firms and investigations of another 146 firms were still going on.
He reiterated government´s commitment to take stern actions against firms involved in the fake VAT receipt scam.
Lawmakers at PAC, meanwhile, lambasted bureaucrats for not respecting public´s rights to information. “VAT scam has disclosed that our bureaucrats are poorly informed about laws of the land and they like to interpret the laws as per their liking. This is very unfortunate,” said Shankar Pokharel, lawmaker from CPN UML.
Dr Prakash Chandra Lohani, another lawmaker, demanded strong action against VAT evaders who forged VAT receipts and cheated the state of the tax they owed to it.
“Some of them even received VAT refund without contributing a penny to the national treasury. The owners of these firms must be put behind bars,” he stated.
Likewise, lawmaker Usha Gurung also asked the Ministry of Finance to take action against those revenue officials who issued fake customs declaration forms to the firms, thus, helping them claim VAT refund by creating fake export trade.