LAHROE - The Pakistan Flour Mills Association has condemned 0.6 per cent taxation on banking transactions and 5% sales tax on bran, saying it will jolt the flour milling industry.
Pakistan Flour Mills Association former chairman Dr Bilal Sufi said that the government should not burden the flour milling industry with such taxes as GST on electricity bills, GST on bran and 0.6 percent withholding tax on every transactions from banks would increase the cost of the industry, which is already suffering great hurdles. He said that the government on one hand claims to take measures to control inflation but on the other imposes levies on food items, taking kitchen items out of reach of general public. He demanded the federal govt to immediately withdraw all these taxes to give relief to the industry and ultimately to the common man.
He said that the government, without sharing the outcome of the taxation policy introduced last year, has expanded the scope of that policy for non-filers.
He said that Federal Board of Revenue would not be able to meet its revenue target set for the year 2015-16 if industry was overburdened with high taxation.
It is unfortunate that only 791,000 individuals filed returns in FY14. That is too low a number for population of over 180 million with unique bank accounts of around 15-20 million. The government’s objective should not be merely that people should file returns but also to pay taxes. Thirty percent of individual filers don’t pay tax at all. While a bunch of people (1,303) pay 25 percent of total income tax paid by individuals and their share has inched up by 1 percent in FY14, which implies that the incidence of tax on existing tax-payers have increased. Interestingly, out of 64,000 companies registered in Pakistan only 24,000 (37%) filed returns in FY14 and almost half of filers don’t pay income tax at all.