increasing share of direct taxes and reducing indirect taxes, he added. “We will enhance tax burden for non filers and will facilitate registered filers in the coming budget,” he said and added that for non-filers the withholding tax (WHT) would be increased.
On the proposal of tax amnesty scheme for whitening of black money, the Chairman FBR said that the FBR had offered three amnesty schemes in the recent decades but all of them failed to yield the desired results as the government had collected only Rs10 billion, Rs6 billion and Rs2 billion respectively in last three such schemes. “It will be difficult decision for any government because certain arguments for and certain against exist.
Senator Kamil Ali Agha severely criticised FBR’s arm-twisting measures and said that taxpayers were harassed and blackmailed in the name of audit. On this, FBR’s Member Shahid Hussain Asad said that under Universal Self Assessment Scheme (USAS), the random balloting audit was being carried out as a deterrence.
At the start of the committee’s meeting, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar told the meeting that the government could increase gains through privatisation of Heavy Electrical Complex (HEC) from meagre Rs33 million to over Rs950 million.
It was first time that the refunds amount was made part of privatisation transaction, he added. On privatisation of PTCL and related properties, he said that there was question of transferring properties under this deal and in case of those 34 properties that could not be transferred a mechanism was under discussion to resolve this issue amicably.
While sharing macroeconomic framework for 2015-16 to 2017-18, Secretary Finance Dr Waqar Masood told the committee that the government would achieve budget deficit target of 4.9 percent of GDP for the outgoing fiscal year despite revising downward the FBR’s target by Rs205 billion, bringing it down from Rs2, 810 billion to Rs2, 605 billion.