ISLAMABAD -The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) would most likely to miss the twice-revised revenue collection target of Rs 2275 billion by wide margin during outgoing financial year 2013-14 owing to its continuous poor performance.
“The FBR will hardly reach at Rs 2250 billion, or even less, against the revised target of Rs 2275 billion by the end of June 2014”, said a senior official of the tax department, seeking anonymity. “We have informed the Finance Minister that revised revenue collection target will be difficult to achieve”, he said and added that FBR would most probably ended at less than Rs 2250 billion. He told The Nation that FBR’s revenue collection is hit by the rupee appreciation against the dollar and reduction in imports apart from other reasons.
The PML-N government remained fail to improve the performance of the Federal Board of Revenue that has not shown impressive work this year. The government had kept unrealistic tax collection target of Rs 2475 billon for the ongoing fiscal year 2013-14 in the last budget. However, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and independent economic experts forecasted that government has set ambitious target in the budget. Therefore, the government has revised the target twice in ten months period because of poor performance of the tax bosses.
The government had first revised the target by Rs 130 billion to Rs 2345 billion in February 2014 from the budgetary target of Rs 2475 billion. However, the tax department was struggling to achieve the target of Rs 2345 billion, which later slashed to Rs 2275 billion in May 2014 after holding discussion with IMF.
The FBR has collected Rs 1745 billion during ten months during ten months (July to April) of the ongoing financial year 2013-14 as against Rs 1509 billion of the corresponding period of last year, registering a growth of 15 percent. The actual tax collection of the FBR in ten months is Rs 1646 billion, as it has withhold Rs 97 billion of the tax refunds of the taxpayers, which is not part of FBR’s collection, as admitted by Chairman FBR Tariq Bajwa before the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue.
Therefore, the FBR would have to collect Rs 530 billion in remaining two months (May and June) of the outgoing financial year 2014-15 to reach the revised target of Rs 2275 billion by the end of June 2014. –IMRAN ALI KUNDI
Sources in Finance Ministry told that economists in recently held Economic Advisory Council that held in Finance Minister in chair said that FBR would get around Rs 2200 to Rs 2340 billion during outgoing fiscal year. Therefore, they suggested the government not to make Rs 2275 billion as base year for fixing tax collection target for the upcoming year. The government has decided to keep annual tax collection target at Rs 2810 billion for the next financial year 2014-15.