ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Finance, Revenue and Economic Affairs, Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh on Wednesday urged the officers of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to improve their performance for enhancing country's tax revenues.
"The public is expecting from you to show exceptional performance in order to achieve the set target (revised) of Rs. 1604 billion", he said while addressing Chief Commissioners and Commissioners of Inland Revenue who gathered here to discuss national targets and collection positions, implementation of short term enforcement measures and other issues.
Dr. Hafeez said all the officials of FBR are professionally talented and are capable enough to help meet the challenges, but sincerity, enthusiasm and sense of responsibility is what they need.
"If other developed countries have 18-20 per cent tax to GDP ratio, why does Pakistan have only 10 per cent ratio", he asked the officers and said that they can also help to achieve this target by putting in extra effort with honesty and dedication.
He said that all the officers should be more alert and active and warned there will be zero tolerance for inefficient officers. "If any person who is not interested to work may quit and let others come forward", he warned the officers.
"It is the national requirement that honest and talented officers should be brought in forefront and given the task to achieve the targets", he added.
He on the occasion vowed that all the rich people would be brought under the tax net and the collected money would be spent on the welfare for the poor.
"It is not only a political requirement to expand the tax net but also a requirement of justice", he added.
Later, briefing the media about the performance of tax collection, Chairman FBR, Salman Siddique said that till February this year, the gross tax collection stood at Rs. 824.6 billion and the net revenues remained Rs. 873.138 billion as against Rs. 791.4 billion with a growth of 10.3 per cent.
He said that initially the target of tax collection was set as Rs. 1667 billion but due to the devastating floods and some other challenges the target was revised and set as Rs. 1604 billion.
The FBR chairman said that in order to make up the shortfall, a strategy was discussed in the meeting in which different issues came under discussion.
He said that top 1000 corporate non-filers and top 1000 corporate short-filers of sales tax for the period between July 2010 to December 2010 have been detected and they would be issued notices by March 15 and action would be taken by April 15.
Salman said that they have a plan to recover the stuck-up amount of about Rs. 130 billion pending in different courts. "We will bring Rs. 10 billion out of the total amount of Rs. 130 billion into the system by June 30", he added.
He said that the FBR has another plan to raise the tax collection with an audit system. "With this system an audit of withholding tax agents would be made which would bring Rs. 6 to 8 billion into the tax system", he added. He said that Banks, Airlines and provincial motor vehicle registration authorities would be brought under this system.
He said that in Islamabad Rs. 4 billion were recovered in a pilot project which was initialized on an experimental basis and remained highly successful.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.