‘Number of taxpayers rises to 50,000 from 8,700 in 3 years’

LAHORE : Punjab Revenue Authority Chairman Dr Raheel Ahmed on Saturday said that owing to efforts of the authority in the last three years, the number of active taxpayers had reached 50,000 from 8,700 while the target is having 100,000 taxpayers by 2020.

He said this during a press briefing. The PRA chairam stressed the need for launching a new strategy to increase the number of tax payers to 200,000 by 2025. He also said that three years ago, the annual collection stood at Rs 43 billion while in the first 10 months of the current fiscal year the authority managed to collect over Rs 86.5 billion. The collection is expected to cross Rs100 billion by the end of this month, he said. He added that he was hopeful that the authority would be able to reach the annual target of Rs115 billion. He said that this would not have been possible without the support and political will of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Finance Minister Dr Ayesha Ghaus Pasha.

He also pointed out that during fiscal year 2015-16, the annual growth was recorded at 40 percent while during 2016-17, it stood at 38 percent.

He shed light on the Tax Day awareness campaign conducted by PRA on April 10 for the last three years. He said PRA on Tax Day of this year managed to arrange a meeting of all four provincial tax collection authorities and FBR to find solution to the mutual differences which itself was an achievement.