It’s all about communication

A few years ago, one day in office, I got a call from my banker. “Sir, there are people from FBR in our branch with orders to take money from your bank account”. Less than a month before that the Officer Inland Revenue of the FBR had passed an erroneous order against my firm making a Tax Demand which I intended to Challenge before the appellate tribunal, however FBR was, as usual, all set to miss that month’s target, so they decided to take money out by force, by the way, this was within the time period allowed to file appeals.

I went to the bank’s branch, tried to talk to the FBR officials but they were in no mood of talking, forced the poor operations manager to make them the pay order and they were gone.

This was quite early in my career, I felt defeated, as if somebody had robbed me off my hard-earned money. I tweeted and tagged the then Minister for Finance, who replied saying I will check. I thought that was that and nothing would happen.

My father asked me to meet the deputy collector the next day and explain to him that whatever his team had done was unfair and that they should return the money, I felt frightened but was determined to go and talk to him. Went there the next day, parked my car in the visitors parking lot and somehow couldn’t get off the car, one part of me said that maybe I should just sit here for a while and then just go back and tell my father that the officer refused. But the other part said no, and I took the other part’s advise and decided to go meet the officer, got to his office and was told to wait, I waited for at least 3 hours before the meeting got over and the collector walked back into his office, dressed in a three piece suite. I knocked the door and walked straight in. the room was full of smoke from his cigarette. Anyway, I sat and explained him what had happened. “Did we make a mistake” he said, yes, I replied. He immediately called his subordinate and asked him if he still had that pay-order to which he said yes. He asked him to bring that to his office, signed & stamped it at the back to release it and told me to post on twitter that the pay-order had been returned. The tweet had worked. But, it was just me establishing communication and talking to the right person at the right time that had worked. A big boost to my confidence it was. No hesitation now whenever I must meet the tax machinery.

We later challenged that tax demand and the order was issued in our favor, had I not acted then and there, the money would have been gone and I would have been making rounds of the tax house for a refund.

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