In a country of over 241m people...: Filers totalled 6.1m in tax year 2023, NA panel told

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Friday informed the National Standing Committee on Finance that the taxation measures taken in the budget for 2024-25 would not be withdrawn and enforcement would be the mainstay for achieving the collection target of Rs12,970 billion.

Briefing the NA panel under the chairmanship of Naveed Qamar here on Friday, FBR Chairman Amjad Zubair Tawana said the tax collection target could only be materialised if the FBR possessed ample resources with increased enforcement. He admitted that the burden on the salaried class has gone up in the budget for 2024-25.

The committee members, including the chairman, expressed concern over heavy reliance on withholding taxes and asked that if all withholding taxes had been collected in an indirect mode, how much revenue would be collected by the FBR’s efforts.

Qamar said everyone was operating as withholding agent as reflected in withholding tax collection during 2023-24. There is a trust deficit between the government and International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the issue of enforcement. The government did not want to impose a sales tax on milk, but they had to do it due to the IMF. He regretted that the burden of tax had been increased on the salaried class.

The FBR chairman admitted before the committee that withholding taxes are imposed to compensate for the FBR’s weak enforcement. However, he said the number of withholding taxes was reduced from 58 to 31. On the real estate sector, he said the economic slowdown had not only been witnessed in the real estate sector but almost all sectors. He referred to the automobile sector and tobacco industry where economic slowdown affected their production and sales.

The FBR chairman said the biggest initiative in reforms was to shift FBR Tax Policy Wings from the FBR. This reform initiative would be achieved by the deadline of March 31, 2025. The transfer of policy wings from the FBR has been agreed by all stakeholders. He said 86,000 returns had been filed after blockage of SIMS of non-filers of income tax returns. The number of return filers now totaled at 6.1 million in the tax year 2023. To deal with one-time return filers, who filed returns for purchasing property/vehicles, the concept of late filers has been introduced through Finance Act 2024.

Under the Pakistan Raises Revenue (PRR) project funded by the World Bank, the FBR will invest $80 million in upgradation of IT infrastructure and projects. He said the prime minister had approved the end-to-end digitization plan. The government has hired McKinsey and Company, a globally renowned consulting firm, for the digitalisation project. The company will submit its report in the next one and a half years. The management team would deal with the next stage of the project. McKinsey would also submit a report about the FBR’s existing projects to be preserved or discarded.