Appellate Tribunal Inland Revenue
Hears appeals in income tax and sales tax matters.
The forum
The Appellate Tribunal Inland Revenue hears appeals in income tax and sales tax matters. It sits in benches across the country, and a tax practice will have matters before several of them at once. It sits above the Commissioner (Appeals) and below a reference to the High Court, so a matter here is usually the last chance to argue facts rather than law.
Where it sits
The principal seat is Islamabad. It also sits at Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, Multan, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Sukkur, Hyderabad and Abbottabad. A date given at one is not a date at another, which is why the bench belongs in the record with the date.
What a firm has to track
Tax appeals sit still for long stretches and then move. The two things a firm loses are the date after a long gap and the tax year a matter concerns — and a diary that records the case number without the year forces somebody to open the file to answer a client. Tax appeals are identified by the tax year as much as the case number, and a client will have several years running at once on the same point. A record that omits the year forces somebody to open the file to answer the simplest question a client asks.
The date the court gives is a fact. Whoever is standing there records it in CaseMate before they leave the building, and the office acknowledges it — it does not wait to be approved.
The firm decides who goes to the next hearing, against the hearing itself. A matter at a distant bench is a travel arrangement, not a line in a list.
Every previous date, its outcome and the note taken at the time — so a partner can be answered without opening the file.
A hearing in the past with nothing recorded against it is the one thing a diary must never hide. CaseMate lists them separately.
Other courts in the same work
Start with today's list.
Set your firm up in a couple of minutes, enter the cases you are running this week, and let your associates report from court.