The Supreme Court of Pakistan during the last many days has dismissed a large number of leaves to appeal, mainly filed by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).

It has proved the oft-repeated assertion of critics that FBR, in most of the cases, files frivolous appeals and conveniently shifts blame on courts and tribunals that due to non-adjudication, revenues worth billions of rupees remain unrealized— struck for years.

FBR’s claim of inordinate delays in deciding tax matters by higher courts and tax tribunals is equally shared by taxpayers.

The evidence, however, shows that main fault lies with FBR. It not only burdens taxpayers with unnecessary litigation and huge cost but also wastes the time and resources of higher courts that could have been utilized for clearing ever-rising backlog in cases other than tax.

FBR officials take it as a matter of right to file appeal against every adverse order, whether or not, there is any justification!

Strangely, after holding numerous leaves to appeal as non-maintainable, due to involving factual controversies and lacking any question of law of public importance, the Supreme Court has not awarded cost to the taxpayers and/or imposed fine on FBR for filing frivolous appeals, as was in a case reported as Commissioner of Inland Revenue, Lahore v The Bank of Punjab (2022) 125 TAX 271 (S.C. Pak), passed by the former Chief Justice of Pakistan, Qazi Faez Isa, observing as under:

“We are constrained to observe that the income tax authorities unnecessarily wasted time, money and effort which could have been better utilised for more productive causes. They discarded the clear determinations by three forums and the EFU case precedent.

Such disdain and persistence without cause, does not engender confidence in taxpayers nor helps in establishing a system which treats them fairly and in accordance with the law. There is no reason to grant leave to appeal to the impugned orders and leave is refused. Resultantly, these appeals are dismissed with cost throughout“.

As expected, FBR failed to learn any lessons from this judgement. In fact, no action was taken for filing the above and many other such appeals and even in its aftermath, FBR has continued to approve filing of many appeals in Supreme Court, recommended by field officers, where binding judgements against FBR were in the field. This exposes the level of competence of field officers, and lack of administrative vigilance at FBR’s Headquarters, where Member Legal, supported by staff and many competent lawyers on its panel, looks after all litigation matters.

It is worth mentioning that Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP), Mr. Justice Yahya Afridi, long before a meeting with a technical mission of International Monetary Fund (IMF) on February 10, 2025, constituted a committee in November 2024 to resolve long-standing tax cases. The committee in its report claims:

“…. around 6000 cases related to revenue are pending before the SCP involving potential revenue of billions of Pakistani Rupees (PKR). Likely, about 2000 cases are pending before Tribunals and Courts where the interim orders have been passed. The meeting was further apprised that a total of 108,366 cases involving PKR 4,457 billion are pending before........

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