ISLAMABAD - The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has missed the tax collection target by Rs14 billion during first month of the ongoing fiscal year despite introducing massive taxation measures in budget. The FBR has collected Rs277 billion in July as against the target of Rs291 billion. The FBR has missed the target despite the government had taken taxation measures worth of Rs516 billion in budget for the current fiscal year. However, the tax collected has shown 10 percent increase when compared with the same period of last year when FBR had collected Rs251 billion. The FBR needs more than 40 percent growth to achieve the annual tax collection target. The government had set challenging tax collection target of Rs5.55 trillion on the direction of International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the year 2019-20.

It is worth mentioning here that the PTI led government had failed to enhance the country’s tax collection not even by a single percent in its first year in office despite introducing two mini budgets and a tax amnesty scheme. The FBR had collected Rs3820 billion during previous fiscal year that ended on June 30 missing the annual tax collection target by Rs578 billion. “Tax collection will increase during current fiscal year, as the FBR decided to chase the non-taxpayers, who had not availed the tax amnesty scheme,” said an official of the FBR few days back. He further said that government had already made the list of non-taxpayers with the help of Nadra. The FBR had received data of property from Punjab and Sindh. As per income tax ordinance every car owner irrespective of income is bound to file tax returns. Similarly, those who have one kanal and above house is also bound to file tax return, he added.