FTO Launches Helpline for Aggrieved Taxpayers

The Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) office has launched a helpline to guide and facilitate aggrieved taxpayers by responding to their queries. The grievance redressal mechanism of the Federal Tax Ombudsman provides speedy and free-of-cost relief to aggrieved taxpayers. In this regard, the FTO secretariat has also launched a public awareness campaign with the approval of the Government of Pakistan to reach out to existing and prospective taxpayers for building their confidence to fulfill their national obligation by paying due taxes in the national exchequer. The Secretariat also developed and launched CMIS software for the convenience of taxpayers. Communication with the complainants through short code SMS service has also been initiated. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has approved the mobile short code 9386 and also developed a monitoring dashboard aided with graphical representations of data for the FTO to monitor daily progress in CMIS. Now, the office of FTO has taken another initiative to facilitate the aggrieved taxpayers and resolve their grievances as FTO’S helpline has been launched. This helpline will guide the taxpayers about the types of complaints FTO deals with, and the process to lodge online complaints through the official FTO website. The timings of the helpline will be 7:30 am to 3:30 pm from Monday to Friday.