ISLAMABAD: Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) has organised an awareness workshop regarding its project titled “Public Awareness and Advocacy About Dispute Resolution Mechanism of Federal Tax Ombudsman” for medium and small scale enterprises on Wednesday at a local hotel of Peshawar. M Siddique, Advisor (Implementation & Monitoring), shed light on the historical perspective of the ombudsman office. He gave detailed presentation about the working of the FTO office. He said at present, there are 150 ombudsman offices in the world. In Pakistan, the ombudsman office was established in 1983 and in year 2000, an independent office of Federal Tax Ombudsman was established. He elaborated in detail the complaint filing procedure and other available facilities provided by the FTO office to aggrieved taxpayers.

He said the mandate of FTO office is to ensure prompt and inexpensive redress of taxpayers’ genuine grievances against maladministration by the tax employees of Federal Board of Revenue Revenue Division, Government of Pakistan. He said an average 1500 complaints annually are currently being handled by the FTO offices across Pakistan. Siddique also highlighted the success stories of the FTO office since its establishment in year 2000.—PR