Pakistan Tax Return Pakistan's FBR helpless against four million tax dodgers: Official
Islamabad/IBNS: Pakistan's tax chief has expressed the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR)'s inability to bring over four million willful law violators under the tax net due to the revenue authority’s lack of capacity, according to a report published in Pak daily The Express Tribune on Thursday.
Pak Inland Revenue Service (IRS) officer Mohammad Ashfaq, who took reins of the FBR over three months ago, said the FBR is "better off" without a $400 million World Bank loan, reports The Express Tribune.
“I am not a great fan of the Pakistan Raises Revenue (PRR) project and the FBR will be better off without it.” he said while responding to a question about whether the FBR needed the $400 million loan from the World Bank to introduce reforms.
FBR chairman Ashfaq was candid in a public interaction on Wednesday, where he also talked about the International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s demands to withdraw sales tax exemptions and increase personal income tax rates for individuals, the Pak media outlet said in its report.
“I cannot do anything about those four million people who are outside the tax net because the FBR does not have the capacity and there are legal issues as well,” Ashfaq said while attending a session arranged by the Policy Research Institute of Market Economy (PRIME).
Mohammad Ashfaq showed in his presentation that against the 7.1 million taxpayers registered with the FBR, only 3.1 million filed annual income tax returns.
The FBR chairman said that against the 305,000 registered sales tax persons, only 191,000 filed annual returns.
“Bringing people to the tax net is a long-drawn-out process and to accomplish the task, the state has to invest in tax administration,” Ashfaq was quoted as saying by The Express Tribune.
“We had been promised an amount through the supplementary grant against the $400 million World Bank loan but the Ministry of Finance either gave very little last year or turned down our requests for funds this year,” he added.
The cost of tax collection was only 0.6 percent of the revenue and the FBR was the most under-financed organisation in the world, the Pak daily reported quoting the top revenue official.
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