The Regional Tax Office (RTO), Karachi, has detected about 1.1 million people, having tax potential of Rs 165 billion, are still out of tax net. Karachi RTO collects Rs 73.8 billion from 0.49 million taxpayers against the total taxable population of 1.59 million.
Several industrialists, businessmen, wholesalers and retailers are still missing from the actual tax net, RTO Karachi Director General Asrar Raouf told Business Recorder on Thursday.
Karachi RTO, he said, had summed up various reports and outlined strategy for future revenue collection as per the directives of the Central Board Revenue (CBR) Chairman.
He said the CBR had initiated a plan to find out missing links in the tax collection system, and asked the concerned tax offices to prepare reports, ensuring possible achievement of over rupees four trillion-revenue collection target by 2016.
According to census of the metropolis, out of 14.5 million people, about 1.43 million did not pay tax because 6.69 million were females, 4.29 million males (0-19 years), 0.34 million males (above 65 years), 0.75 million expatriates and one million illegal immigrants, he added.
"Therefore, only 1.59 million people, including 0.16 million working urban females, are taxpayers in the metropolis," Raouf said. He said that in the city, about 1.76 million were current account-holders and 2.49 million saving account-holders, of them only 0.76 were liable to pay tax.
Raouf pointed out that Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) had given connections to 0.26 million commercial and 0.02 million industrial consumers, RTO Director General said, adding that unfortunately only 0.14 million commercial and 5,400 industrial units were filing returns.
In the next fiscal year, he said, Karachi RTO would monitor the income of teachers and doctors to increase the tax net. About the next year's revenue collection target of Rs 1.025 trillion, Raouf said: "Viewing the current revenue collection growth rate, the target was achievable."
He said the CBR would launch a media campaign to attract people to file returns, and added that all these activities were the part of reform policy, which would be completed by December 2009.
Under the reform policy, three large taxpayers units (LTU) had been planned, he said, adding two each LTUs were working in Karachi and Lahore, while another one in Islamabad would soon start functioning.
Of the 13 RTOs, to be established in the country, four RTOs, one each in Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Abbotabad and Faisalabad, were functional and the remaining nine, one each at Quetta, Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Lahore, Sialkot, Multan, Gujranwala and Islamabad, would soon be operational, he said.