LAHORE   -  The business community has said that complicated tax procedures have been creating troubles for the businessmen and Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) should facilitate taxpayers for making these procedures more simple and easy, as only the simple tax procedures can improve tax collection. 

Equitable taxation among all sectors of economy, broadening of the tax base and honest utilisation of tax proceeds would help Pakistan make the business community confident and move towards sustainable growth, said LCCI former vice president Kashif Anwar. He said that the broadening of tax base was critical, but needed to be done in an equitable way. 

The government will have to create a culture where businessmen should be given respect and honour so that they could concentrate to build-up the economy of the country. 

Anwar said that there is a long list of complications for the filer, including compliance of law, mental tensions, audits, raids, fines, penalties, enquiry of previous transactions, bank attachments, maintaining books of accounts, withholding taxes, submission of monthly and annual returns, extra financial burden of keeping tax staff and advisers, to keep updated with the daily changes and most importantly the punishments are only for a taxpayer and not for unregistered ones. 

He said that almost everyone agrees that the current tax system is too complicated, yet almost every year the system gets more complex, not less. There is a long list of confusion as to what is a registered person in taxation system. When there is one tax system then why the laws of sales tax and income tax contradict with each other at certain important sections. 

“A person is registered in Income tax but he is treated as an unregistered person in sales tax. Surprisingly, laws applicable in sales tax differ from laws applicable to income tax for the same taxpayer and for the same transaction. A transaction in taxpayer sales tax books of account is legal but it is illegal in income tax,” he added. 

People from every walk of life want to come into the tax net but when they compare themselves with the registered taxpayers they admire themselves for not becoming filer due to complexity of tax system, he added.