Metro Shoes to Resolve Rs. 500 Million Tax Fraud in 2 Weeks

Big retailer Metro Shoes is likely to resolve its issues with the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) within the next two weeks. A Metro Shoes representative told ProPakistani that the discussions had commenced with the tax machinery after the senate committee ordered the two parties to resolve all issues related to sales tax issues outside of the court. In response to that order, the FBR Chairman and Metro Shoes owner agreed in the committee hearing that they would sort it out on the table. The aforesaid development comes weeks after the FBR registered an FIR against Metro Shoes for evading sales tax to the tune of Rs. 500 million. The case was brought to light when officials allegedly noticed discrepancies in Metro Shoes’ sales tax filings and reported it to the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue. According to relevant officers of the tax regulator, the enterprise appeared to be in a slump and uploaded only a small percentage of invoices with the FBR bar-code (issued to customers). The inquiry compared the sales tax profile from July to October 2021 to a comparable period and found that, despite all favorable circumstances, sales and output tax of Metro Shoes declined throughout the time under review. As a result, Islamabad’s Large Taxpayers’ Office (LTO) established a monitoring team to visit the taxpayer’s premises on a regular basis. The tax machinery had undertaken a large-scale effort a few years ago to integrate the sales from large retailers with its online system to track sales and discover sales tax and income tax evasions.