Tax reforms: APAT announces countrywide agitation against PTI govt

LAHORE: Rejecting the CNIC-based invoicing condition, the All Pakistan Anjuman-e-Tajran (APAT) has announced to launch a countrywide agitation against the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government for its alleged failure to introduce tax reforms and providing a ‘conducive’ working environment to traders who are considered as the backbone of the country.

“We (traders) reject the CNIC-based invoicing system and call upon all the opposition parties to sit and share with us the draft of their anti-government protest movement which was devised in the recently-held All Parties Conference (APC),” said APAT Central General Secretary Naeem Mir while addressing a presser here on Tuesday.

He was critical of the PTI government’s tax reforms policies relating to businessmen and announced that traders would join the opposition’s anti-government movement with “full power” if their concerns were not addressed amicably. He said they were also finalizing arrangement for organising a “trader’s convention” in Lahore in the coming days which would be the starting point of the agitation.

“In October last year, we had signed a historic agreement with the government but its implementation remained a day dream for us,” he said, adding that after the signing of the agreement, the government removed former Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Chairman Shabbar Zaidi, who was the signatory.

According to Mir, former PTI senior leader Jahangir Khan Tareen was also guarantor of the agreement in question, but he left the country after the government prepared (corruption) cases against him, leaving the traders ‘helpless’. He said Prime Minister Imran Khan in a meeting with traders had also acknowledged and termed the agreement as a historic step and promised to provide ‘conducive’ working environment to traders, but its implementation could not be materialised till date.

He said that businessmen in Karachi incurred losses of billions of rupees during recent floods and the federal government’s announced relief package was also in the doldrums. “We are unable to understand where we should go now because the government does not stand by its words and its promises are against its actions,” he claimed.

Requesting the opposition’s recently-formed Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) to sit with traders and include their concerns in its anti-government agenda, the APAT general secretary said: “It is our collective decision that CNIC-based invoicing condition is not acceptable under any condition.”

“Due to this condition, no one knows about the exact volume of trading taking place in the country right now, and every audit would be opened and cleared after giving bribe to authorities concerns. People are not producing or providing CNICs and entries by and large are faked,” he alleged.

Talking about the demands of traders, Naeem Mir said the government must provide three-year tenure security to the FBR chairman; FBR must be free of any political influence; measures be taken to end harassment culture by the tax authorities, an easy understandable tax form in Urdu language be prepared so that 3.5 million small traders could be brought into the tax net.

Mall Road Trader Association President Sohail Butt said the government had announced to provide relief to the people through reduction in electricity tariffs during the Covid-19 pandemic. “But as the normalcy returned the government started sending electricity bills by adding the relief amounts,” he regretted.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020