The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Sunday stated that revenue collection has grown by 17 percent with additional revenues of Rs 345 billion as compared to the collection of the previous year.

During the current Fiscal Year 2019-20, out of Rs 920 billion target for the period from July to January, 2020, the FBR collected Rs 897.5 billion Income Tax, which shows an increase of 18.1 percent compared to the corresponding months in the last year in which Rs 759.1 billion income tax was collected.

Likewise, the target of sales tax collection till January, 2020 was set as Rs1039 billion, out of which, the net collection of Rs 996.6 billion had been was achieved, showing growth of 24.7 percent compared to the corresponding period of last year which Rs 799.1 billion were collected.

The Federal Excise Duty of Rs 145.1 billion was collected against the target of Rs 151 billion from July to January, which showed an increase of 23.6 percent, according to FBR press statement issued here.

The customs duty collection was targeted at Rs 399 billion till January, 2020 while the board managed to collect Rs 373.8 billion compared to Rs 390.6 billion last year in the same months. So far FBR has collected Rs 2407.7 billion against the target of Rs 2509 billion, which shows increased by 16.7 percent compared to last year when Rs 2062.7 billion were collected.

The domestic tax collection has also increased by 28 percent. The Domestic sales tax increased by 41 percent during July- January 2020 while the total domestic revenues of Rs 1339.91 billion were collected compared to last year’s Rs 1057.60 billion. Revenue at import stage has grown by 6 percent against budgeted target of 36.8 percent.

FBR has issued Rs 54 billion of additional refunds this year compared to last year. The total refunds of Rs 131.01 billion were released till January 2020 whereas during the last year the refunds of Rs 76.71 billion were issued, the statement added.

The board has also released the refunds detail issued through FASTER system. The total number of refunds claims cases where Annex-H submitted were 6081 with a claimed amount of Rs 37614 million.

The FASTER system has processed 4606 cases with a claimed amount of Rs. 33364 million showing percentage of 89.99% of total cases. After the processing of such cases, total refunds of Rs. 29303 million have been issued showing a percentage of 87.47 percent of processed cases. Through the FASTER system, Rs 4061 million were deferred due to want of required data.

Up to February 29th 2020, total returns for Tax Year 2019 were 2,483,866 whereas 373,877 new taxpayers paid taxes in Tax Year 2019, it concluded.