ISLAMABAD - The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) collected Rs1722 billion during first half (July to December) of the current fiscal year, missing the target by a wide margin. 

The FBR has missed the first half’s target by Rs50 billion. However, despite missing the target, the FBR’s tax collection has shown healthy growth during first six months of the year 2017-18.

The FBR remains on track to achieve annual collection target of Rs4013 billion. During first half of the current financial year, the FBR has received provisional net revenue of over Rs1722 billion as against Rs1466 billion collected during the same period in the previous year, registering an increase of around 17.5 percent over the revenue collected during the corresponding period in the last fiscal year.

These figures have been arrived at by taking reconciled figures of net revenue collected up till November, 2017 at Rs1305 and provisional figures of Rs417 billion for December, 2017.

The refunds during the last period have been issued to the tune of Rs58 billion as against Rs45 billion issued during this year, showing an increase of 28 percent during the corresponding period of the previous fiscal year.

The target for the year has been fixed with an annual increase of around 19% over the previous year.

The tax collection has recorded healthy growth due to the recently imposed Regulatory Duty on the imported commodities.

Sources informed The Nation that tax collection would also increase in the months to come due to rupee depreciation against the US dollar. Around 5 percent rupee deprecation would increase the tax collection on imported commodities.

The provisional collection for the month of December 2017 was 417 billion, excluding collection  on account of book adjustments which may range between 4 to 5 billion as against 382 billion collected during December, 2016, showing an increase of around 39 billion.

Moreover, figures of collection received in the treasuries of the remote areas may further swell the revenue figures. The Federal Board of Revenue also rejected the impression that the number of the returns received for the tax year 2017 had declined as compared to returns received for the tax year 2016.

This impression is grossly misleading as only 953,410 returns were received up till December 31, 2016, whereas 1,158, 380 returns have been received till December 31, 2017.

This shows an increase of 21.5 percent in the number of returns received during the same period of the previous fiscal year. Also, since the last date of filing of returns by the corporate sector fell on Sunday, which is a public holiday, therefore returns and tax on the basis of returns of the corporate sector has spilled over into January, 2018.