Govt urged to abolish advance tax on tobacco

MARDAN: Provincial president of Anjuman-e-Huqooq-e-Tahaffuz Kashtkaran (AHTK) Naimat Shah on Sunday condemned Federal Finance Minister Miftah Ismail’s decision on advance tax on tobacco and said it is a conspiracy of multinational tobacco companies’.

Speaking to journalists, Naimat Shah added that tobacco companies purchased tobacco at Rs256 per kilogram from farmers, on which the tax has been increased from Rs10 to Rs380 rupees per kg, which is tantamount to finishing tobacco crop.

He argued that tobacco is the cash-generating crop of the province and provides excise duty of Rs200 billion annually to the federal while the provincial governments and Pakistan Tobacco Board are also receiving taxes worth billions of rupees from tobacco.

He added that more than two million people of the province were related to the crop. He added that with this advance tax, these two million people would take to the streets, whether they are workers in the factories or farmers working in the fields.

He added that due to heavy taxes, many factories have already moved from our province to Kashmir and if this situation continues, all domestic factories would be finished.

He demanded the government to abolish this tax, otherwise farmers would stage protest rallies.