ISLAMABAD
The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has to collect Rs 394 billion in just one month (June) in order to reach the thrice revised tax collection target of Rs 2605 billion set for the outgoing financial year 2014-2015.
The FBR has collected Rs 2211 billion during eleven months (July-May) of the outgoing fiscal year, said Shahid Hussain Asad, official spokesperson of the FBR while talking to The Nation on Saturday. He informed that FBR accumulated Rs 236 billion in May 2015, which would increase in next couple of days.
The FBR had fixed the target of Rs2,810 billion but it was revised down thrice by the government, bringing it down to 2,756 billion, then Rs2691 billion and finally to Rs2605 billion for 2014-15.
It is worth mentioning here that government had introduced five mini-budgets to generate additional revenue to meet the target. However, the revised target of Rs2605 billion seems difficult to achieve keeping in view the so far performance of the tax department.
The government had introduced five mini budgets within few months to generate additional revenue. The government also introduced additional revenue measures include: (i) raising the GST rate on petroleum products (excluding furnace oil) from 17 to 27 percent in two stages; (ii) levying regulatory duties on steel products and scrap metal; (iii) introducing a regulatory duty on mobile phones; (iv) levying an additional 5 percent regulatory duty on furnace oil; (v) increasing the withholding tax on non-filer contractors, service providers, and importers; and (vi) increasing import duty on luxury items; and (vii) levying regulatory duty on metal scrap. In last decision, the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet on April 30 increased the GST on high speed diesel (HSD) from 32pc to 34pc. Sales tax on petrol, kerosene, light diesel oil (LDO) and high-octane blended component (HOBC) increased from 18pc to 20pc.
APP adds from Lahore: Regional Tax Office-II has collected Rs 51.257 billion during current fiscal year up to April last, showing a growth of 14 per cent more tax collection than last corresponding period.
Official sources told APP here Saturday that an amount of Rs 45.025 billion was collected during the last fiscal year. The major revenue spinner of RTO was taxation of salary vis-a vis income tax. Revenue impact was almost stationary from this sector as tax rate of salary remained the same during the current financial year.
Further due to power sector outages especially “CNG” revenue collection has shown negative trend (collection from CNG sector during current fiscal year is Rs 71 million only as compared to last year tax collection of Rs.2,548 million).
During the on going financial year, top 10 revenue contributors were also transferred to Large Taxpayer Unit (LTU). The sources told that although above factors were major obstacles in the way of achieving the assigned revenue target of Rs 51.123 billion upto last April has been attained successfully because of the dedicated efforts of a team headed by Chief Commissioner Income tax Ms.Rukhsana Yasmin.
Federal Board of Revenue has appreciated the significant growth in tax collection in RTO-II.