FBR surpasses Jan tax target by Rs 17 bn

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has surpassed its monthly target for January 2021 as its collection fetched Rs 363 billion against the desired monthly target of Rs 341 billion.

For the first seven months (July-Jan) period of the current fiscal year, the FBR had collected Rs 2,568 billion against the desired target of Rs 2,551 billion, surpassing the revenue collection by Rs 17 billion. “The revival of stalled IMF program is around the corner and the FBR’s performance for achieving its target for January 2021 will help restoring confidence of tax collection machinery,” said one top official of FBR. Now the FBR machinery could claim the IMF that they would achieve the annual tax collection target of Rs 4,963 billion envisaged for the current fiscal year.

The FBR’s top official said that the net revenue collection stood at Rs 363 billion which was 12 percent higher over same month of last fiscal year and so far the highest during the current fiscal year. The official said that the economic activities started picking up so its impact was appearing on revenue collection efforts. Now the FBR will have to collect Rs 2,395 billion in remaining five months (Feb to June) for displaying the desired fixed target of Rs 4,963 billion on June 30, 2021.

The FBR had collected net revenue of Rs.2,205 billion from July to December which showed a growth of 5% over Rs. 2101 billion which was collected during the same period last year. The Income Tax collection for July to December stood at Rs. 816 billion. Similarly, collection of Sales Tax, Federal Excise Duty, Customs Duty remained at Rs. 915 billion, Rs. 127 billion and Rs. 336 billion respectively. For the month of December only, the total collected revenue stood at Rs. 508 billion, which was 97.7% of the target of Rs.520 billion and showed a growth of 8.3% against 469 billion collected in last December. There is an increase of Rs. 39 billion in the revenue collection of December 2019. This is the highest monthly growth during Jul-Dec period.

In the first six months of current fiscal, refunds to the tune of Rs.102 billion were issued compared to Rs.53 billion for the same period the last year. This represents an increase of 90 percent in the issuance of refunds. Moreover, under the Prime Minister’s Corona Relief Package, refunds of Rs. 42 billion were also been issued this year. Despite excessive issuance of refunds this year, FBR has managed to collect significantly more revenue in comparison to last year when COVID had not disrupted the economic life. Increased refunds have greatly helped boost the economic activity in the country. During the first six months of current fiscal year, smuggled goods worth Rs.30 billion were seized as compared to seizures of Rs. 22 billion during the corresponding months of 2019.