SLAMABAD - The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has pinned hopes on tax amnesty scheme to meet its revised tax collection target during outgoing fiscal year, as the scheme may generate upto Rs80 billion for the department.

The FBR believes that response to the amnesty scheme is very positive, as the government could attract up to $4 billion through the scheme by the end of June.

"We have already decided that collection from the amnesty scheme will be made part of the FBR revenue collection, so it will help in meeting tax collection target during the outgoing fiscal year," said an official of the FBR.  He estimated that FBR could raise around Rs80 billion through the scheme.

He admitted that FBR was struggling to achieve the revised tax collection target without the expected tax collection from amnesty scheme. The FBR will have to collect Rs661 billion during the ongoing month of June to achieve its revised tax collection target of Rs3935 billion.

The FBR collected Rs3.274 trillion during eleven months (July to May) of the ongoing fiscal year as against Rs2.854 trillion during the same period of the previous fiscal year, registering 14.4 percent growth in collection.  The federal government had already revised the tax collection target of FBR to Rs3935 billion for the outgoing fiscal year from the Rs4013 billion.

However, the tax department is now focusing on the scheme to meet its target. The FBR is making all possible efforts to achieve its target including taking advance taxes of the first quarter (July to September) of next fiscal year.

Meanwhile, the FBR on Tuesday has directed that all field offices of the FBR will remain open and observe extended working hours till 8:00pm on 29th June, 2018 (Friday) and till 10:00pm on 30th June (Saturday) for collection of duties and taxes.

The Chief Collectors of Customs will liaise with the State Bank of Pakistan, National Bank of Pakistan and other scheduled commercial banks in their respective jurisdiction to ensure transfer of the taxes collected by these branches to the respective offices of the SBP on the same date and to account the same towards collection for the month of June, 2018.

The previous PML-N government had announced tax amnesty scheme to declare local and foreign assets by paying nominal tax. The scheme became effective from April 10 and will run till June 30, 2018.

Earlier at the start of the scheme, people did not take interest to take benefit from the amnesty scheme, as only few thousand people have declared their assets. The business community has called upon the government to give at least one month's extension in tax amnesty scheme so that maximum number of business community and other people could take benefit of it.

However, the government had clarified that no extension would be given under the tax amnesty scheme. The FBR has warned the holders of undeclared local and foreign assets to face dire consequences who would not declare assets after expiry of tax amnesty scheme from July 1, 2018.