FBR appoints teams at mills: Sugar production up by 70pc

ISLAMABAD: In a bid to minimise yawning revenue shortfall, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has posted monitoring teams at all sugar mills all over the country in order to record actual production and detect any tax evasion, The News has learnt.

The FBR has invoked powers under Section 40-B of Sales Tax Act for posting its teams at all sugar mills for monitoring purposes on rotation basis after which the sugar production has gone up by 70 percent.

The enforcement campaign has been launched against many sectors including sugar, real estate, mega retail and chain stores and other sectors such as fashion designers as well as cement sector.

The enforcement campaign has been launched at a time when the FBR is facing massive revenue shortfall to the tune of Rs237 billion in first eight months (July-Feb) period of the current fiscal year.

Now it is yet to be seen how much the FBR can move towards reaching nearer to the desired target of Rs4,398 billion on June 30, 2019 which simply seems impossible to achieve keeping in view the existing shortfall.

The FBR generated total tax demand of Rs6.638 billion from all sectors and so far recovered Rs2.976 billion in the current fiscal year.

The monitoring of sugar sector has resulted into creation of tax demand worth Rs3.224 billion in last two months out of which the FBR recovered Rs457 million, one top official of the FBR disclosed while talking to The News on Friday.

The tax demand of Rs561 million has been generated from real estate sector and recovery stood at Rs352 million. The demand from retail sector generated to the tune of Rs823 million and recovery made so far standing at Rs520 million.

The FBR made tax demand of Rs2.030 billion from all other sectors and recovery stood at Rs1.647 billion.

The tax demand of Rs1.9 billion was generated alone in case of Omni Group in Karachi, but the company got stay order in this case from the superior judiciary.

“The production of sugar mills was monitored by Large Taxpayer Unit (LTU) Lahore and average production of bag per day resulted into surge in declared production by 70 percent as compared to the same period of the last year. The collection of sales tax from sugar sector from July-Jan in LTU Lahore has gone up by 30 percent during this period,” said the official.

The FBR has collected additional Rs1.5 billion with increased declaration of production in the ongoing financial year.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Imran Khan has directed the FBR to take action against five kinds of celebrities including singers, sportsmen, media personalities, politicians and businessmen and real estate tycoons.

A message sent out to field formations by the top officials of the FBR is stating that the PM desired action against those whose declared income does not match with their lifestyle.