KARACHI: The apex tax authority is likely to attach bank accounts of tax defaulters in a desperate move to secure more than Rs600 billion to meet the revenue target of the outgoing fiscal year of 2016/17, sources said.
The sources said a high-level meeting was held at the Large Taxpayers Unit (LTU) Karachi on Friday to discuss the revenue strategy during the last 15 days of June, marking the end of 2016/17, to meet the revenue target of Rs3.521 trillion.
Haroon Akhter, special assistant to prime minister on revenue, Mohammad Irshad, chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and chief commissioners attended the meeting. FBR sources said the meeting decided to make all-out efforts to achieve the annual revenue collection target.
The revenue authority collected around Rs2.9 trillion during the first 11 months of the current fiscal year and still needs more than Rs600 billion to hit the target. The meeting said the only available option is to extract money from bank accounts of tax defaulters. Sources said the tax officials were directed to finalise their cases to recover the outstanding amounts from the taxpayers.
They said the meeting directed the tax offices to enforce laws of bank attachments and arrests of defaulters for recovery. They added that the tax machinery realised that the tax offices could not take any other measure, such as audit and detection of evasion/avoidance during the remaining days of the current fiscal year because such actions need time.
The tax offices were, however, directed to invoke laws related to tax evasion and avoidance by taxpayers and prepare comprehensive strategy to pursue the cases in the next fiscal year.
Sources said various tax units made comprehensive presentations on revenue collection during the meeting. Both prime minister assistant and FBR chairman appreciated the revenue collection efforts made by LTU Karachi, which collected more than one trillion rupees till June 15.
LTU Karachi was, however, asked to gear up efforts to achieve annual target of Rs1.130 trillion set for the unit. The tax unit collected Rs1.062 trillion in 2015/16.
The FBR chairman further told the meeting that the action against non-filers should further be enhanced in the early next fiscal year.
The government set Rs3.621 trillion as tax revenue collection target for the tax year of 2016/17. However, it was revised down to Rs3.521 trillion after a shortfall was witnessed due to reduced sales tax on petroleum products, fall in profitability of banking sector and subsequent impact on tax payments and concessions granted to agriculture and textile sectors. The collection target for the next fiscal was set at Rs4.013 trillion. The meeting also advised the tax offices to evolve strategies keeping the next year’s target under consideration.