Sindh Revenue Board to achieve revenue collection target despite economic slowdown

The Sindh Revenue Board (SRB) has announced that despite the economic slowdown in the country and the devastation caused by floods in 2022, it will achieve the target of collecting Rs180 billion revenue in the ongoing financial year ending on June 30, 2023.

A statement issued by the SRB on Sunday said that the board in the nine months of the current financial year from July 1, 2022, till March 31, 2023, had collected Rs128.206 billion. The revenue collections during the same period in the previous financial year 2021-2022 stood at Rs104.800 billon, showing an increase of 22 per cent in the revenue collection.

In the month of March 2023 alone, the SRB collected Rs19.034 billion in revenue. In contrast, in the month of March last year, it had collected Rs14.888 billion, showing a promising 28 per cent increase.

The revenue board said the increase in revenue collection reflected the confidence of the Sindh-based taxpayers in the working of the SRB.

A spokesman for the SRB expressed gratitude to its staffers and the Sindh government for extending all possible support to its revenue collection drive.

Last month, in pursuance of its policy to show zero tolerance against defaulters, the SRB sealed an elite recreational club in DHA due to its default in paying taxes for the provincial kitty.

The SRB seized important financial records of the club to scrutinise it. The revenue board said in a statement that the club in addition to being a defaulter in paying taxes was also a non-filer. The action was taken in pursuance of the Section-51 of the Sindh Revenue Board Act 2010.

It is worth mentioning here that the SRB came into existence some 12 years ago following the devolution of powers to collect the general sales tax on services from the Centre to the provinces after the passage of the 18th Constitutional Amendment.

In the initial years, the SRB came under severe criticism in the Sindh Assembly as lawmakers from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement criticised alleged that it mostly collected revenue from the urban-based businesses in Sindh discouraging the emerging culture of entrepreneurship in the cities as the people of cities like Karachi were already overburdened with taxes.