The Punjab Revenue Authority (PRA) has decided to speed up the registration of new businesses and the installation of its Electronic Invoice Monitoring System (E-IMS) across 14 designated sectors, while warning of strict action against those who issue fake receipts or tamper with records. PRA Chairman Moazzam Iqbal Sipra made the announcement while chairing a performance review meeting of the Lahore and Rawalpindi Commissionerates in Lahore. The meeting was held to assess the operations and enforcement activities of the two Commissionerates, and it set out the priorities of the authority for the coming period, with registration and the installation of the monitoring system at the centre of the discussion.
The chairman directed all Commissionerates to devise effective strategies for identifying new taxable services and bringing them into the tax net. Officers have been given specific targets for E-IMS installations, and enforcement teams will be formed to boost registrations and installations. This means that the officers of the authority will be assessed against numbers for the systems that they install, and that dedicated teams will work to find businesses that are not yet registered. He also ordered close monitoring of pending tax cases and the timely recovery of outstanding dues, which links the drive for new registrations with the collection of money that is already owed to the authority.
Stressing cooperation with the business community, Sipra said that chambers of commerce and trade associations should help fast track the integration of businesses with E-IMS. The authority therefore expects the representative bodies of traders to assist in bringing their members onto the system, and it presented the integration as a task in which both the authority and the business community have a role. The statement shows that the plan relies on cooperation as well as on enforcement, since the chambers and associations are in contact with the businesses that fall in the 14 designated sectors.
The chairman also warned that firms found issuing fake receipts or manipulating records, even with E-IMS installed, would face strict action and a tax surcharge. This warning makes clear that installing the system does not by itself protect a business from penalties, since the authority will continue to check whether receipts are genuine and whether records have been altered. The decisions taken at the review meeting combine targets for officers, enforcement teams, cooperation with chambers and penalties for misuse, and they are aimed at bringing more services into the tax net through the electronic monitoring of invoices.
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