FBR establishes National Faceless Centre for faceless tax audits, assessments

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has established the National Faceless Centre (NFC) in Islamabad to conduct tax audits and assessments without direct contact between taxpayers and tax officers.

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has established the National Faceless Centre (NFC) in Islamabad to conduct tax audits and assessments without direct contact between taxpayers and tax officers.

The centre will begin operations in October under a new system in which cases will be selected through a computerised, risk-based system and automatically assigned to tax officers, according to the FBR.

The decision to establish the NFC was taken by the Board in Council at its meeting on Friday. The centre is a major reform of the way tax audits and assessments are conducted in Pakistan.

Under the new system, taxpayers will not know which officer has been assigned their case, while officers will have no say in which cases are assigned to them. Each case will pass through three separate officers: one will conduct the audit, a second will make the assessment and a third will review the work before an order is issued.

All notices, replies and hearings will be conducted electronically through the FBR’s IRIS system. Where physical verification or recovery is required by law, the work will be carried out by a separate field team.

The NFC derives its legal authority from the Finance Act 2026 and will be headed by a chief commissioner of Inland Revenue. It will have dedicated wings for faceless audit, faceless assessment, quality control and field operations. A Programme Management Unit has also been established to oversee its rollout.

The reform is intended to apply the same rules to taxpayers, base decisions on data rather than personal judgement and reduce face-to-face contact between taxpayers and tax officials. The FBR expects the system to make tax proceedings faster, fairer and more transparent.