ISLAMABAD: An apparently dejected government gave a third extension on Thursday in the tax amnesty scheme as the number of filers could not cross 7,700 while authorities struggled till late night to reach close to the nine-month revenue collection target of Rs2,105 billion.
In July-March 2015-16, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) could collect Rs2,088 billion till Thursday night. “The figure is expected to rise further as field formations of the FBR were in the process of reconciling the data,” said Dr Mohammad Iqbal, the FBR spokesman.
“We expect to cross Rs2,100 billion, which itself is a big achievement,” said Haroon Akhtar Khan, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Revenue.
In case, the FBR misses the Rs2,105-billion target, Pakistan will have to seek a waiver from the IMF executive board. The FBR had also fallen short of the Rs1,390-billion target for the first half of the fiscal year, though only with a thin margin.
The provisional collection in nine months was Rs314 billion or 17.7% higher than the comparative period of previous fiscal year.
For the entire current year, the revenue collection target was set at Rs3,104 billion. Owing to the poor performance in the first five months, the government had introduced a mini-budget in December last year.
This gave a major push to the revenue flow as the government heavily taxed imports of goods, making raw material expensive and causing an increase in inflation.
The government has also recovered an extra Rs92 billion during the July-February period from consumers of petroleum products by increasing the sales tax up to 108.7% of the ex-refinery price of high-speed diesel.
The FBR’s audit function remains weak, allowing taxpayers to escape the law despite under-declaring their earnings. It also could not make progress in cases of 44 politicians that were selected for audit including Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif.
