May 31 Last Date For Transfer Of Vehicles With Open Letters; Excise Officers Directed To Accelerate Recovery Campaign

RAWALPINDI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th May, 2018 ) :May 31 would be last date to transfer ownership of vehicles with open letters as from June first, Punjab Excise Department (PED) would introduce a new system under which the buyers and sellers will have to visit the Excise Office for Bio metric verification.

The Excise officers have also been directed to accelerate ongoing recovery campaign and conduct general hold up to take action against token tax defaulters and unregistered vehicles. According to an Excise and Taxation spokesman, on the directive of Director General Excise and Taxation Punjab Muhammad Akram Ashraf, special teams have been constituted to conduct general hold up on every Wednesday and check unregistered vehicles and token tax defaulters.

The vehicles of the defaulters are being impounded, he added. He said, the department is sealing commercial and residential properties here for non-payment of property tax. He urged the owners of properties and vehicles to pay their property taxes and vehicles token taxes at the earliest otherwise strict action against the defaulters would be taken under the law.

He informed that the Rawalpindi Division has collected over Rs 3.86 billion revenue including property, motor, professional taxes, excise fee and entertainment duties in four districts of the division during last 10 months.

Provincial government had fixed over Rs 4.6 billion revenue target for Rawalpindi division including Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Chakwal and Attock districts for 2017-18. Overall 83 percent target has been achieved in 10 months of this financial year.

Excise and Taxation offices of the division recovered over Rs 1.27 billion against the set target of over Rs1.

68 billion with 76 percent revenue collection under property tax while motor vehicle tax collection remained over Rs.

964 million, 78 percent against over Rs 1.23 billion target. He informed that the division succeeded to achieve overall 83 percent of the revenue target, recovering over Rs 3.86 billion. The spokesman to a question said, the owners of vehicles have been directed to register their vehicles under their own Names as most of the vehicle owners across the province are using open transfer letters to buy and sale vehicles.

The open transfer letters which did not have any date and particulars of the buyer were considered an easy way to transfer ownership without paying any charges or taxes. Open letters have been declared illegal by the government, he added.

PED has directed the owners to get their vehicles registered with the department and complete the transfer of the ownership till May 31. From June first, it will be compulsory for the buyers and sellers to physically visit the Excise Office and transfer the ownership to the buyer's name, going through the whole process again.

Open letters will become useless after May 31, he added. The computerized transfer deeds will now be used instead of paper-based deeds, he said adding, this has been done to facilitate the public and save the time consumed by manually filling the forms.

The deed will have complete information about the buyer, seller and the vehicle being sold and transferred. The buyers and sellers will just have to sign the form and put their thumbprints on it. Bio metric verification will be done and photographs will be taken as well by the department, he added.